Endless Pantheon: Letters from Home
by Todeswind
Summary: This story is intended to provide a venue for short stories told from the POV of humans on Earth in the Endless Pantheon universe that aren't long enough to merit their own story thread but aren't thematically tied to any of my longer narratives.
1. Chapter 1

Four Months After Shattering Occam's Razor

* * *

As she spread calming salve across the little girl's wounded chest, Janet felt an entirely rational jolt of rage. She was going to kick Ferrovax's teeth in if she ever got half a chance. Immortal Dragon god be damned, she was going to make that prick pay. What kind of asshole does what he did to Emily? To his own freaking family?

He was as bad as the Goa'uld.

The angry wound running down from Emily's neck to her pelvis looked like a ragged zipper, swollen and crisscrossed along her front. It was a miracle that the Tok'ra had been able to heal her at all, judging by the blood soaking the Colonel's uniform when he'd entered the ruins of Janet's surgery.

While time and Emily's natural propensity for quick healing seemed to have mended the physical wounds, she didn't seem as bright or excited by things going on around her.

The period of quarantine for the child had been and gone, leaving the SGC in something of a pickle when it came to deciding what to do with Emily. The majority of Heka's peasants had been relocated to the Land of the Light in short order, but there remained two as of yet unresolved asylum cases for Emily and the Priestess of Heka, Aisha.

It had come as something of a surprise when the NID actually backed Emily's bid for asylum, given their history of demanding Teal'c be turned over to them for interrogation and study, but Colonel Mayborne had been quite emphatic in demanding that the little girl be given asylum through the SGC. Jack was convinced that it was a political move on the other Colonel's part, an attempt to play nice given the fact that Kinsey was inserting a permanent structure for the NID to have both presence and power in the structure of the Stargate Program.

Janet didn't like that they were dependent on the good will of the NID, but the SGC's political capitol had taken a hit due to the publicity of the invasion and it was only with the NID's help that the program was able to maintain its secrecy.

The civilian oversight agency actually had more power in denying outside inquiry than the SGC had by itself, as the ostensible policing agency for determining how and when "national security" was being abused as a reason to deny access they were effectively able to end requests for information before they even finished being filed through the proper channels. For now, the cover story of a Tetrazine gas leak seemed to be holding but only time would tell.

Mayborne had stayed good to his word thus far. Emily's provisional asylum had been granted and she was due to be given permanent asylum within the month. The NID had even blocked several inquiries from other agencies about the circumstances of the Dragon, to the SGC's combined gratitude and chagrin. Mayborne was, in Jack's words, "an asshole but not complete scum."

The NID had insisted on having security present to monitor the girl and ensure that the "asset" was not lost. In practice this meant a pair of armed SFs always protecting Janet's house in plainclothes, usually on her porch or patroling round her property. It was more invasive than Janet might have cared for before the invasion but after seeing the horrors the crustacean-like aliens had unleashed upon the SGC, she found herself sleeping easier with an armed guard on-call.

Moving the child to Janet's house seemed to have helped somewhat. Cassandra was uniquely equipped to help Emily cope with both the loss of her people and the nuances of dealing with the day to day issues of living on earth. It was good that the two girls didn't have to live in the same room though.

Emily's possessive hoarding would have made a shared living space effectively unmanageable. The little girl's fondness for reverting into her draconic form within the confines of room meant that amenities like furniture proved impractical.

General Hammond was ultimately going to have to soothe some ruffled feathers with base housing when Janet moved out of the property. Dragon claws scratched the heck out of wall to wall carpet, and the little girl had a tendency to stretch out like a cat and paw the ground before she rolled into a ball at night to sleep on the mattress that had become her bed.

Emily didn't like staying in one form for too long. While she consented to staying in human form while they traveled between the SGC and Janet's house, as soon as she was able to return to her room or the halls of the SGC Emily would almost immediately revert to her serpentine form.

She'd become something of a mascot at the SGC. Given the number of Airmen and Marines who genuinely believed that their lives had been saved by the young dragon's actions, she was universally welcome wherever she went. This was especially useful in the dining hall, given the additional labor she'd introduced into their daily routine.

Emily's nutritional needs were not insubstantial, and several times a day it was necessary for the base culinary staff to prepare a sizable serving of protein for Emily to consume.

Unsurprisingly, watching a dragon consume seven to ten percent of her body weight in raw meat had become an unofficial team building and spectator sport for the base staff. Given that Emily preferred to roast her own meat, it really was a sight to see. It seemed highly unlikely that the enlisted would tire of it at any point.

Janet still insisted on having one family meal a day, but Emily seemed to eat her portion mostly out of politeness rather than any real fondness for Janet's cooking. Well, that and her love of dessert. Emily was willing to consume any amount of vegetables provided that there was chocolate at the end of that rainbow.

"Are you still feeling sore?" Janet asked, pulling the sterile gloves from her hands and tossing them into the trash bin next to the door. "Any more pain or dizziness recently?"

Emily shook her head, sitting upright on the mattress and pulling a USAF shirt over her head. She poked her head out the garment and snorted in irritation at the feeling of the shirt sticking to the medicine, puffing smoke out her nostrils reflexively. She picked at the shirt, trying to find a comfortable way to have the cotton touch the salve before just deciding to ignore it. "No. No pain. I'm fine."

Janet grunted, only half believing her. Emily would insist that nothing was wrong while she had a knife through her back, her own draconic sense of what meritied mentioning did not match Janet's own parental instincts. "Ok, but you mention it the second that something bothers you."

"Yes, Janet." Emily replied, biting her lip as she continued to clearly be irritated by the shirt.

"It's Mom - you can call me Mom." Janet rolled her eyes. The choice to even wear clothing was an affectation on the part of Emily. She was more than capable of just creating a garment in the same way that she'd created the human body she was using rather than her draconic form, but the shirt had been given to her. It was "hers" and she wasn't about to miss out on a chance to use her gift, especially a gift from Sam Carter. She opened the door to the hall and was all by bowled over by fuzzy shape of Stuart, Cassandra's Shiba Inu.

The furry terror rocketed into the room and propelled itself at Emily, yapping excitedly as Emily squealed in delight grabbing the tri-colored terror into her arms and cuddling it while making a rumbling noise reminiscent of a cat's purr. Jack O'Neill's pervasive insistence that human children were required to care for a dog had been taken as the word of GOD by the young dragon, who took every opportunity to meet her familial obligations to the canine. She'd taken to feeding, cleaning up after, and playing with the dog with near religious dedication.

Emily looked up from nuzzling her face into Stuart's belly, seemingly realizing that she'd been ignoring Janet. "Uh … sorry…. Mom…"

The last word came out awkwardly, as though she were not accustomed to using maternal terms even conceptually. Janet smiled back at the little girl. "Its ok honey. Did you get your homework done yet? Sam's going to be checking your work today."

"Yes." Emily replied firmly enough that Janet knew there was no way in hell that she'd actually done the work properly. She arched a brow at the child, giving her a firm look till the dragonling flinched and corrected herself. "I mean - I will get it done before."

"That's what I thought." Janet rolled her eyes. Given Emily's proclivity for shifting shape and her nutritional requirements, enrolling her in a local school like they'd done with Cassandra would be impractical. Given the concentration of PhDs at the SGC, it had been decided by Daniel and Sam that it made more sense to just homeschool the child on base. Given that teaching Emily guaranteed one on one time with a literal dragon, willing teachers weren't in short supply.

But some facts remained universal about kids, even of the dragon variety. Nobody likes math homework.

"Mooooooom." Cassie shouted from downstairs, bellowing at the top of her lungs. "Phooonnne!"

Having long ago consigned herself to the fact that Cassandra had no intention of walking upstairs and just telling her that she had a phone call, Janet elected not to correct her eldest child but rather to just exit Emily's room and pull the handset from the wall.

"I've got it Cassie." Janet spoke into the phone and was almost immediately greeted by the loud click of her eldest hanging up. She counted to three, reminding herself that the teenager meant well, before taking into the phone. "Janet Fraiser speaking, who is this?"

"Janet! How are you?" Replied the convivial voice of Jack O'Neill.

"Jack, good to hear from you. Is this about Tuesday?" Replied Janet, pleased to hear the man's voice. "We are still on for movie night?"

"Oh, yeah! Of course. I wouldn't want to disappoint the girls." Jack replied firmly. "Have they picked a movie."

"Cassandra wants to watch something scary." Janet replied, her uncertainty worming into her voice. "But I'm worried about actually showing them Harvest."

"The Darby Crane flick where guy breaks into the convent and eats nuns?" Jack replied in confusion. "She wants to watch that? Cassie, our Cassie?"

"I know, but she's a little old for the Disney thing now." It was sad, but true. Cassandra was growing up.

"But Darby Crane? The guy is a hack - he doesn't seem to actually understand pacing enough to be really scary." The Colonel replied in disappointment. "Can we just watch Braveheart again?"

Janet gagged. "Jack, I've had to watch that damn movie once a week for four months. If I have to watch it again I'm going to start rooting for the prince."

"Fair enough, Darby Crane it is." Jack replied.

"You don't think that it's too graphic?" Janet inquired.

"Not really. Cassandra is about the right age and … well… not to put too fine of a point on it but Emily... Emily isn't exactly delicate. I'm not overly worried about offending her sensibilities." The Colonel snorted.

"Ok Jack, I'm ok with it if you think it's a good idea." Janet conceded. "If you're not asking about what movie to rent, why are you calling?"

She could practically hear Jack's smug grin over the phone. "Actually, I was wondering if you guys had any plans for today."

"Nothing in particular, why?" Janet inquired.

"Well, I had a thought about our little "F-word" issue." Jack replied emphatically.

"Jack, we talked about this." Janet replied sadly. "She can't even bear to hear about flying. If we take her skydiving it's just going to make things worse."

"No - no, I had another idea. Well… Sam did, and I'm the one who knew a guy." Jack replied before elaborating on what he had in mind. Janet's lips quirked up into a smile as the man laid out what he had in mind, actually laughing at the simple elegance of it.

So it was that three women and a dog found themselves in a car heading out to an empty field in rural Colorado. It was Cassandra's turn to pick the music, which effectively meant they were in for two hours of Ricky Martin - Cassandra's most recent pop-crush. Emily seemed mostly confused by her adoptive sister's musical preferences, electing to listen to classical music from the radio whenever she was given control of their in-car entertainment.

Janet was careful not to drive too fast along the highway, the SF's in the following car would get in trouble if they lost track of Emily. There was also the chance that they might be replaced with NID mercenaries, which Janet was hoping to avoid.

They reached the address Jack had given Janet after about two hours, pulling past several different checkpoints where Janet had to show them her ID to pass. She followed the long road away from the highway, driving past a thick tree-line that obscured property from prying eyes before entering a private airfield. It was the sort of place that was mostly used for rich people to store their jets and for the military to move people when discretion was required. It was currently closed for repairs due to an issue with the radar tower, but Jack was friends with the owner so he'd gotten permission to use the empty building for his plan.

Cassandra's mouth opened in shock when she saw the multicolored fabric of the massive balloon. "Are we going to fly?"

"Yes, honey, we are." Janet replied as she parked the car, unbuckling her seatbelt as she looked into the back of the car at Emily's conflicted expression. "You ok, Emily?"

"Yes," The girl replied reflexively, her arms clasped tight around her chest in a way Janet knew would cover the scars on the girl's back where her wings had been. "I'm fine."

Janet nodded, allowing the girl to lie to her. The three women got out of the car, following Stuart as he barreled across the runway to "Uncle Jack." The Colonel snorted, picking up the little dog and holding the pampered pooch like a baby. "Well hello there Mr. Fuzzy. You are getting fat."

"That dog gets no attention." Janet jibed sarcastically as Jack opened the door to the balloon's wide basket, stepping in and placing the dog on the ground. It was a massive compartment, big enough for a much larger group of people to enter comfortably, and a cooler full of sandwiches and drinks was already cracked open in the center of it beneath the hanging mechanism for spouting flames. A mechanism that was already being tinkered with by Sam Carter. The bonde Astrophysicist pulled at the machine, sending a spurt of flame into the cloth balloon as she greeted the group. "Everybody ready to fly?"

Janet and her daughters entered the balloon as Jack walked over to the SFs, presumably relieving them of duty and telling them where the balloon was headed so they could meet them with Janet's car at the landing point.

"Hi Sam." Cassie hugged her adoptive Aunt. "How's work?"

"Busy as usual Cassie." Sam replied, ruffling the girl's hair.

"Stop it," The teenager protested half-heartedly as she kneeled down to scratch Stuart behind the ears.

"Alright, let's see about getting this tub in the air." The Colonel Walked into the basket and started untethering it from the ground. "Sam, you mind introducing our star player to her job?"

"Of course." Sam beamed at Emily. "You, little miss, are going to make us fly."

"I can't." Emily replied, tears welling in her eyes. "Can't fly."

"Actually, yes we all can." Sam pointed up at the machine that was burning above them. "You see this basket is actually lifted up by the hot air captured in that balloon. The more hot air, the greater the lift. And while I can use a machine to make that heat, I figured that you might do a better job of it than the machine."

"Fire?" Emily replied, an eager wistfulness to her as she pulled her hands from her scars and pointed at the mechanism. "Just… like that? Breathe up?"

"Just breathe up." Sam agreed. "That's all you need."

Emily pursed her lips as though she were whistling and exhaled a long torrent of flame as Jack released the last tether. The basket shot skyward, uplifted by the sudden rush of hot air. Emily continued to exhale, breathing in deeply and buffeting out streams of flame. Sam checked a number of arcane looking instruments on the side of the basket before placing her hand on the little girl's shoulder, "That's high enough Emily, any higher and we'll start going in the wrong direction."

The little girl's eyes were clouded with tears of joy as she hugged sam hard, burying her face in the astrophysicist chest to hide her open weeping. Sam patted the child's back softly letting her regain her composure before asking. "You ok there Sparky?"

"Good Sam. I am well." Emily wiped the tears from her eyes. "The sky is mine Sam. I am flying. I am not broken, not worthless."

"You are never worthless." Janet snarled, furious at the very idea of it.

"Dang right you aren't, and don't let any jerk tell you anything different." Jack replied firmly. "Now, who wants a sandwich?"

"Me." Emily took the wrapped foodstuff from Jack, holding it to her chest and looking to the people around her as she embraced her meal. "Thank you sister, thank you mother, thank you other mother, thank you father. Thank you for flying with me."

"We love you too kiddo." Jack snorted as the dog started barking emphatically, trying to get Emily's sandwich. "Now eat that sandwich or give it to Stuart but don't just taunt the poor dog with ham."

Janet laughed out loud as Emily proceeded to feed her entire sandwich to the pampered pup.


	2. Chapter 2

Set one Month after Harry met Moloch

* * *

Netan would never have believed that a human was capable of amassing the degree of wealth and power to which he had access. It was beyond belief, but he'd managed to beg, borrow, steal or Shanghai a fleet comparable to a Goa'uld sub lord. He'd even managed to subvert a number of Jaffa who'd been unwilling to recognize the divinity of any of Hell's current leadership, quite likely making the Lucien Alliance the only non-Goa'uld government to employ the armies of the gods other than the Tau'ri.

It was Netan's dream made manifest, the labor of a slave who would be king. The Lucien Alliance had started as an impossible idea, the dreams of slaves forced to labor beneath the surface of Delmak while living in fear of their masters above and the monsters below. Netan had united the families under his rule out of simple practicality. Living without some degree of unity of action on Delmak was a prescription to die a horrible death.

Netan had lived like most slaves beneath Delmak's surface, scrounging for scraps in those times when he wasn't forced into back-breaking labor to keep the industry of Sokar churning out war materials and consumer goods for the surface worlders. He'd lived most of his childhood in abject terror that he might earn the ire of his Jaffa masters and find himself on a one-way trip to Netu like so many others before him. He knew that his lot in life was better than those slaves on the lower levels, who would be guaranteed a lifetime of suffering in service of Sokar's eternal war to keep the subsurface creatures of Delmak under control. There were things at Delmak's heart that defied description, horrible formless entities of alien designs and malevolent goals.

Netan couldn't hope to buy his way to the surface, he was forever branded by the ancient shame of a family member so far in the distant past that nobody seemed able to even remember the precise crime he'd committed. But he could keep himself within the relative comfort of the immediate subsurface with access to sufficient funds. Delmak's immediate subsurface had always been a haven for those clever enough to capitalize on the greed of its residents.

Netan was very, very clever.

It had started simply enough, the Necropolis Guardsmen weren't without their vices and Netan had been able to track down the luxury items for them that weren't strictly legal. He'd started by limiting himself to "grey" markets, things that weren't explicitly prohibited by Sokar's law, but were the sort of thing that would earn him time in the stocks were it to come to the attention of a Jaffa of less flexible moral character than those in his customer base.

Prostitution was the first industry he'd capitalized upon, it required a relatively minimal degree of overhead and had the ancillary benefit of allowing him a network of people invested in keeping the client list for his brothels a secret. Once he had Jaffa effectively on his payroll, it required little effort to expand his interests into more esoteric items that were entirely illegal.

Truth be told, as a child who'd grown up on Delmak, Netan hadn't ever had an abundance of respect for the idea of Laws. They were often arbitrary pronouncements, prescribed by creatures who neither knew nor cared how they were imposed upon the people living in their borders.

His own internal rules and codes of behavior for the members of the Alliance were as brutal as the rules of the Goa'uld System Lords, but he'd taken great care to ensure that they were enforced for the sake of practicality and functionality rather than capricious bouts of self-interested vindictiveness.

So when he shoved a pain stick into the man's open wound, he made sure to take minimal satisfaction from the act as the man squirmed on the ground before him. Netan kicked the bleeding man hard, turning to his best friend and confidant and asking, "You're sure this is the one?"

"Sure as I can be." Replied Kefflin, adjusting the straps to his leather jacket. The practice of having uniforms for the leadership was a relatively new one, and they were all having to get accustomed to the leather garments as they broke in. "His records were sanitized, but he did a shit job of it. I'm reasonably certain that he's the one who did it and even if he didn't, he was doing something in Gehenna. Far as I'm concerned that's enough to space him."

Gehenna was over of the few places that Netan had unambiguously forbidden his organization to go. Unfortunately the Jaffa and humans of Moloch's realm were both wealthy and unconcerned with the legality of the items for sale. Those brave enough or stupid enough to actually engage in forbidden commerce soon found themselves discovering just how serious Netan was about his embargo.

"I'm very disappointed in you Farze." Netan, lifted the broken man to his feet, hanging his manacles from the hook in the ceiling with Kefflin's help. "We don't have a lot of rules in the Alliance. But those few that we do are sacrosanct to our brotherhood. They are the ties that bind us."

Netan shoved the pain stick into the gasping man's side, the glowing agony from the weapon shimmering out from his eyes and mouth. "And you go and do a fool thing like selling merchandize to Moloch's Jaffa."

"Not just Merchandise either." Kefflin snarled, his scarred and craggy face twisting up in disgust. "You misappropriated persons who'd paid for passage into the Warden's territory. They had a contract with us."

"I didn't – I would never…" The man blubbered as Kefflin grabbed his face, hard, and twisted the man to face the altar sitting in the corner of the room. "Don't lie, Lad. Not where he can see you."

The man squeezed his eyes shut, too terrified to make eye contact with the bust of the lord Warden. Netan had spared no expense in having it made, paying an artisan from Nekheb a small fortune to carve a life-size replica of the man's facial features from ivory inlaid with obsidian for the eyes and hair. The firelight glimmered on the bust's eyes like the starlight that shimmered in those of the Warden after his ascension.

It was not the face that Netan remembered, and would always remember, with the perfect and impossible clarity that had been imprinted on his very soul but he knew that it was the Warden's true face, the face of what the infant god had become. Netan hadn't been able to speak of what he'd seen in the man's eyes – the hordes of monsters, the darkness that slavered at the edges of reality, and the beautiful Angel clad in purest white – but his quiet worship of the Lord Warden and respect for the man's creed of duty, action, and righteousness had spread through his senior leadership like wildfire.

It was believed that Netan held some special connection to the Lord Warden, and he was horrified that they might be right. His dreams were haunted by the blonde specter, an imprint of beauty beyond compare. She never said anything to him, only looking through him with a smirk and a predatory gimmer of amusement in her eyes.

Kefflin hadn't shared in Netan's experience, but his fondness for the Lord Warden's doctrines was enough that he didn't much care if there was any actual truth to the Warden's divinity. Any god who eschewed worship, praised strength, demanded action, and didn't tolerate betrayal was sufficient to work its way into Kefflin's litany of prayers alongside Pelops and Ares. That the Lord Warden held a special degree of fear for anyone who might betray the alliance's "special relationship" with him only sweetened Kefflin's love of the God of Thieves.

"No, you don't!" Kefflin shoved the man's face back to looking towards the bust, prying the man's eyes open and forcing him to look into the obsidian orbs on the bust. "You lie, and you lie to him directly! You know what happens to the ones who lie to the Warden? Those who betray his will end up fed to the Eater of Sin! You will never reach the afterlife."

The man broke down utterly, shivering and sobbing. It had been days since they'd allowed him to sleep or eat a proper meal. "Please – please don't, I didn't mean anything by it. It was just a trade. He wanted a wife, they all wanted wives. I figured that living as a wife wouldn't be so bad… even on Gehenna. It wasn't till after that I saw."

"The Jaffa of Moloch don't buy their wives. They definitely don't buy human wives." Netan smashed the pain-stick across the man's back, whipping him with the bar rather than prodding him with the pain-maker. "They only buy chattel for sacrifices or worse."

"I didn't know!" The man blubbered. "I couldn't!"

"Well, you do now." Kefflin chuckled darkly, crooking his fingers and summoning the two Alliance Enforcers standing at the door. "We're done with him. He's guilty."

"No – no!" The man screamed and kicked against his bonds as the Enforcers grabbed him, lifting him off the hook and dragging him from the cell. Kefflin grinned in amusement at the man's piteous howling as the door shut, basking in the man's final moments as the enforcers dragged him to the nearest airlock.

"Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy." Kefflin grinned to Netan.

Netan snorted, Kefflin's brutality was refreshingly honest. Kefflin wasn't a complex man, he really only cared for three things in life, money, power, and people to be impressed by how much if it he had. But he was, for all his greed, a loyal man. As long as one dealt with him directly and honestly, one could trust in the man's word to the ends of the galaxy. Unfortunately, as of late, Kefflin was the only man Netan felt confident that the term "loyal" could be applied.

"He didn't work alone." Netan spoke firmly, walking over to the statue of the warden and wiping a smudge of blood from the marble forehead with his sleeve. He wet his finger in annoyance when the leather garment proved insufficient rubbing at the smear until he was certain that the white surface was clean again. "He wasn't clever enough to have purged his records and he wasn't inventive enough to have sought out the Jaffa of Moloch."

"You want me to call back the Enforcers before they space him?" Kefflin queried in mild disappointment.

"No – no, if he didn't squeal on his compatriots after a week of torture he wasn't going to." Netan replied in irritation. It seemed unlikely that the man would electively give the names of his compatriots. A certain degree of discretion was near obligatory in even the most cowardly and incompetent members of the Alliance.

It was generally accepted that one would die before snitching and largely unnecessary for Netan to force the information from the hapless subordinate – not when he had Kefflin's resources at hand. "I want you to go through every scrap of data from his transport ship. I want to know who in our organization is making deals with Moloch's people. I want them dead, do you understand me? I want their families, dead. I want their children dead. I want you to kill everyone who has even so much as smiled at them so that nobody in our organization even begins to dream of having anything to do with Moloch and then I want you to set their pets on fire just to make doubly sure that people get the message."

"Sure thing, boss." Kefflin chuckled, leaning up against the wall next to the shrine. His eyes shone with poorly contained glee. The man's reputation for bloodlust was remarkably well earned, by the time Kefflin was done there wouldn't be a scrap left of anyone who'd dared to even begin to associate with Moloch, even by accidental association. "When do you need this by?"

"We need to have these people rooted out of our organization before the second stage of expansion." Netan stopped cleaning the bust of the Lord Warden, turning to his closest friend and confidant as he spoke in a near whisper. "Before we risk drawing his attention and ire."

"Boss, it's just a statue. It can't hear you." Kefflin shook his head. "They're not omniscient. If they were we wouldn't be able to operate. I mean, don't get me wrong. The recordings on the battlefield taken of him are very impressive, but even the gods have their limits."

"You haven't seen what I've seen Kefflin." Netan nervously placed his palm against the forehead of the bust and willed prayers of supplication to it, apologies that his people had dared to ally with the enemies of the Lord Warden. "And he doesn't need to be omniscient for one of his border patrols to catch an Alliance transport heading across the border. If he thinks that we're aiding his enemies, he'll stop turning a blind eye to our feet."

Kefflin grunted in assent, forced to concede the point. The Lord Warden's fleet wasn't huge, but it was competent and extremely well equipped. The Alliance fleet of cargo ships and pilfered Goa'uld warships had thus far been tolerated by the Lord Warden's forces. Nekheb had few enough trading partners that they didn't have the luxury of turning down smugglers, and the Lord Wardens forces were inclined to allow anyone smuggling refugees from the war-torn outer sectors into the annexed portions of Moloch's and Chronos' territories. Not to Nekheb prime, of course, but nobody had seen the crown system of Nekheb in over a year.

The Lord Warden was tolerant of many things, but providing sacrifices to Moloch would immediately brand the Alliance as heretics. He would bring the full might of his fleets and armies down upon them – including Furlings. Netan didn't dare enrage the Furlings.

There were some things that sane men just didn't do. Netan took his hand from the statue. "Phase one expansion went well. We have lines of supply and communication spread through the territories of Lord Yu, the various Kingdoms of Hell, and the Hellenic States. We can't get greedy. Getting greedy gets us dead."

"Kassa production is optimal and our customer base is growing exponentially." Kefflin replied, shrugging. "We'll soon be at the point where we can afford to outright buy warships from some of the more advanced people not under Goa'uld rule rather than having to steal from the Goa'uld."

"Not till phase three." Netan disagreed adamantly. "Not without an established supply line."

"Netan, there is already dissent over your plan. I will back you but this foray into trading with Moloch is only going to be the beginning of our problems if you don't share the full scope of your eventual goals with the others as you have shared it with me." Kefflin exhaled in exasperation. "If I have to keep killing people who doubt what you're doing we're going to work through most of our senior leadership."

"And they'll be replaced by people who aren't dumb enough to defy me." Netan replied firmly. "They don't need to understand my goals, only obey them."

"Even I would be nervous to enact phase two." Rejoined Kefflin. "Are you sure there is no other route?"

"Not if we are to move to phase three." Netan shook his head. "No, we need a broader customer base for our product. It's worth risking the attention."

Kefflin laughed. "If you insist."

"I do." Netan replied, leaning down to blow out the candles in his shrine one by one before placing his forehead against the forehead of the bust of the Lord Warden and whispering a parting prayer for success. "We are defined by our actions, not our wishes. And I will succeed in founding the greatest criminal empire to ever existed so that even the gods must bow before us."

He smiled at the bust. "For if we are marked as the equals of the gods, why then should we not strive to surpass them?"


	3. Chapter 3

Aisha still wasn't used to the Tau'ri custom of wearing clothing at all times, even after having lived on the First World for four months. She'd begrudgingly accepted their seemingly prohibitive fear of the human form as a universal fact of their military culture. There was a constant, persistent fear of the human body, as though human beings would risk devolving into a degenerate rapist if one were allowed plain view of a woman's body. It was such a persistent and prevalent cultural taboo to the degree that she was actually starting to wonder if the fears were founded in something legitimate, in spite of never having witnessed anything other than rigid restraint in the Tau'ri she'd met thus far.

In private she still allowed herself the simple freedom of disrobing, if only to facilitate the process of seeing to her old wounds.

Aisha looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, running her finger along the scar running down her cheek. When she'd been a Priestess of Heka that mark would have terrified her. Heka would not have tolerated an imperfect image. She would have been beaten to death for having failed to protect herself, then brought back to life so that she could beg for him to allow her survival. If she had failed to be convincing in her pleas the process would repeat until either Heka felt that she'd earned the right to continue living or grew bored and slew her. But for the Warden? The scar felt more like an act of devotion.

One act among many such acts. There were nearly as many scars along her body as tattoos now. The ointment that Doctor Frasier provided her had helped to heal them, though not as effectively as they might have been using Goa'uld magic rather that Tau'ri alchemy.

The wounds she'd suffered while isolated in the corridor of flesh had been quite severe. While the Lord Warden's protections damaged and repelled the antagonistic meat and chitin, it was not enough to entirely discourage the barbed tentacles and razor-sharp teeth. Her memories of the battle were cloudy, the same injury that marked her face had left her badly concussed. Combined with the noxious gases flooding the corridor, she could only remember agony and fear.

She closed her eyes, shuddering as she remembered the dying screams of Tau'ri warriors. She heard them less while she was awake then while she was sleeping. Her prayers seemed to have banished most of the lingering specters haunting her. But there were some ghosts that would linger in one's heart long after the actual spirits moved on to the next life.

She whispered a prayer to the Warden as she crossed her arms and bowed her head, cupping her breasts in supplication. Aisha hoped he was proud of her. She was making slow progress in reaching her goal of preaching to the masses – slow enough to feel nearly infinitesimal – but it was progress.

It had come as something of a surprise when the Tau'ri had _asked_ her if she was seeking amnesty in their nation rather than just informing her of where she was to be relocated as they'd done with lost souls who'd defected from her Lord's light. She had, of course, requested to be allowed to remain on their world on religious grounds.

Of all the dangers she'd anticipated on the wild and untamed lands of the First World, bureaucratic stagnation hadn't ever remotely entered the list. How a culture more meticulously asinine in its scrupulous and unyielding adherence to process hadn't managed to be feared for that _alone_ was an obvious byproduct of its omnipresent predatory megafauna. Even the Jade Empire's cavalcade of cosmic bureaucrats couldn't have conceived of horrific process by which one applied for a Green Card.

The Tau'ri had a form for _everything_. From the moment of birth someone would pull a sheet of paper out so that the parents could ensure that the child had been properly documented and a raised seal could be demonstrated to the relevant government authorities at any point. Near as she could tell, the purpose of the certificate was to provide adequate documentation that a birth had occurred in the event that having a living person present was not sufficient for one's birth to be believed. Having set the tone with that, the Tau'ri seemed quite determined to ensure that any given action taken in life had been adequately documented for posterity.

She'd filled out enough paperwork at this point that there had to be a small library archived somewhere on the First World exclusively for her. Aisha was sincerely starting to worry that the Tau'ri viewed filling out paperwork as a sort of religious obligation in service of an as of yet unknown god of menial busywork abandoned by the rest of the Patheons in the hopes that he might meet his end on the First World.

She walked out of her bathroom and into the modest apartment she'd been given while her case for amnesty was processed by the legal authorities of the First World. It was luxurious in comparison to her already surprisingly lush accommodations within the fortress housing the Chappa'ai. She'd been allowed to move from the fortress to the planet's surface at the behest of Adrian, the Minister she'd met on her eventful first day.

He was a kind man, if infuriatingly stubborn in his factually incorrect assertion that only his god could even hold such a title. Clever men could be quite inflexible when faced with their own faults. Still, he'd proven surprisingly knowledgeable regarding the tattoos given to her by the Blessed Lady of Nekheb. She was doing her able best to educate herself in the written languages that she now found herself able to speak at a whim - the lady's blessings had apparently only extended as far as speaking the languages. She still had to learn how to read and write the old fashioned way.

His books were stacked on the table in her kitchen, forming a library of Tau'ri religious text from which she was doing her best to research what the Lord Warden's goal for her on the First World might actually be. She was entirely convinced that her presence on the First World was part of his grand design, but it the new Lord of Nekheb's methods were infuriatingly obtuse. She was quite entirely convinced, however, that the Minister's nameless god factored into this somehow. The Lord Warden collected powerful allies, mustering the greatest heroes and villains of the ancient Pantheon to fight at his side.

The nameless god certainly fit that bill, though she found herself wary of his temper. He seemed to have a nasty habit slaying those who disobeyed his rules in remarkably horrific ways, even for the ancient pantheons. Most of his ten major rules were relatively standard for a god, he was to be worshipped above all others, and one could not build idols to his rivals. The prohibition on murder, theft, adultery, deceit, jealousy and perjury were nice bonuses. The odd insistence on not speaking his name was vexing though - how was she to invoke a nameless creature? How does one worship a being with no name?

But the sheer volume of minor sins that one could commit were overwhelming. She had initially worried that her very body was a offense to the eyes of Adrian's nameless god, every devotion etched upon her flesh an apparent abomination. He assured her, however, that this was not the case - pulling up his sleeve to show her a tattoo of his own. She'd smiled politely, internally horrified that he'd elected to mark himself with a man being crucified. When she'd asked about some of the other rules in that very passage, however, it seemed that the value attributed to each individual sin was almost arbitrary. A great many other acts were apparently sinful without ever having been written of within the holy texts of the Tau'ri.

She supposed it would make sense with time. Fortunately, time was about the only resource Aisha currently had in abundance.

The Tau'ri were not uncharitable hosts by any measure. Though they did not permit her freedom of movement, the location in which she'd been detained was even more luxurious than her quarters within the subterranean fortress had been. She was what Adrian assured her was a "small" household by the standards of the Tau'ri. It had previously been a communal place intended to house Officers of the Tau'ri military from one of the affiliated forces associated with the Tau'ri. The Tau'ri apparently separated warfare by dominion. There was a force of Air, of Land and of Sea - though apparently each held partial dominion over all realms of combat.

This house had apparently been previously dedicated to providing temporary lodging to pilots tasked with flying the wedge shaped Tau'ri Gilders built in service of battle at sea. Colonel O'Neill had indicated that they were apparently annoyed to have had their "frat house" repurposed, with a hint of glee in his tone. The three realms of combat apparently held a borderline unhealthy degree of rivalry with each other.

There was an odd assortment of personal items left within the property by the former occupants, some of it obviously left with the intention of being used by the next occupant of the property and some of it accidental remainders abandoned by a man in a rush. There was a shelf full of novels, fictional stories of mystery, murder and intrigue - though none of them seemed to be the first story in their tale. She'd made a genuine effort to read them, but their text was too dense for her currently limited vocabulary.

Fortunately, there was a stack of glossy publications beneath the restroom sink that seemed closer to her current reading level. It was greatly comforting to know that there were women on the First World with fashion sensibilities closer to her own, though she found herself somewhat confused by the simultaneous diversity of appearance and stunning conformity within a body type she'd not previously realized was so common.

As she flipped between articles, educating herself on the music, movies, and fiction of the Tau'ri, she saw more and more _perfect_ bodies. Not good, not great, _perfect_ \- they had no scars or blemishes that she could see, their flesh wasn't marked by signs of childbirth, and their torsos seemed quite entirely determined to defy the limitations of gravity.

No wonder the nameless god felt it necessary to specifically call out the evils of envy and lust on a world populated with women who looked like the Tau'ri. If the men of Nekheb found out that there were eligible women who looked like these to be had they'd be making outright pilgrimages to worship at the altar of the nameless god. It was hard not to find her own bruised reflection deeply wanting in comparison whenever she pulled a glossy paged publication from the stack and made eye contact with the buxom girl beneath the logo of a hatted hare.

As she strode into the living room, she made eye contact with the Tau'ri standing guard outside the glass door connecting her kitchen to the outside. Her guard was a woman, as were all the guards in the immediate perimeter of her gilded prison. The Tau'ri seemed convinced that the warriors tasked with her protection and incarceration would be insufficiently inattentive if they allowed men to fulfil that role.

Though, judging by the female guard's appraising smirk, they'd accomplished less with this particular guard than they might have hoped. Aisha rolled her eyes and pulled the curtains shut. She was not ashamed of her body being seen, but felt it was improper to encourage the sort of leering desire she'd seen in that guard.

She flopped down on the sofa, picking up the square, black remote and pressing the red button she knew would active the Tau'ri contraption. Samantha Carter, the woman warrior and blood bound dragon priestess, had educated her in the basics of operating the arcane machine. The Tau'ri _insisted_ that there was no magic to the box, while in the same breath explaining that it was a glass screen that projected invisible messages broadcast through the open air with the use of captured lightning.

The Tau'ri had strange metrics for measuring miracles.

Television was nothing, if not miraculous. She'd spent countless hours studying the world of the Tau'ri through the television, doing her able best to parse the fact from fiction. The "News" was apparently what Samantha Carter felt would best educate her on the realities of the First World, but she found the monotone man sitting at a desk and droning endlessly to be soul crushingly dull. Every time she'd tried to force herself to sit through an entire hour of it she'd invariably wandered to another program due to how utterly incomprehensible she found his references to be.

She'd started compiling lists of questions that came to her as she was watching the Tau'ri programs, scribbling on page after page as she watched. The Larry Fowler show had filled several notebooks by itself, looking more like the ravings of a madwoman when she was done than the coherent thoughts of an educated priestess of the Lord Warden.

She channel "surfed" for a good half-hour before settling on the program documenting the life of the Tau'ri head of state. She knew it was common practice for leaders to provide their people with a narrative upon which to judge their great works, but President Bartlett had taken the curious route of showing his flaws in addition to his successes. He'd even told the story of his opposition in a largely measured way, considering that it was propaganda. She hoped that when her application for amnesty finally reached the desk of the President, he would be as measured with her as he'd been in the other aspects of ruling the Tau'ri.

The drama of it was _fixating_ \- the parable told in this chapter of the Tau'ri leader's life was regarding a man who'd committed horrible violence to slay evil men, and the leaders choice to let him die or reduce his sentence because they were slaying a man. It was breathtaking to watch the head of state agonize over the death of a single prisoner. She watched transfixed as the man consulted with religious leaders over the Sabbath Day to find answers and prayed for forgiveness upon ending a single man's life. Truly, President Bartlett was a worthy and gods-fearing man.

The program was over all to soon, switching to seemingly endless morality play of Law and Order. The Tau'ri's choices of morality plays were odd, crimes she wouldn't have even considered worth mention apparently could earn one a lifetime in prison. Honestly, it was a father's duty to beat one's children if they were disobedient. Killing a child in one's enthusiasm was shameful but hardly the sort of thing to merit a lifetime of incarceration. Aisha ignored the program's start and walked over to the closet, pulling out the cardboard box she knew was within it.

The previous occupants of the house had left a pile of boxes marked "Hook' Lives Forever!" and "Fun Times with Chairforce" containing a curious array ways to pass the time. Most of them were the black, plastic squares on which the Tau'ri kept spools of magnetic tape to project images on the screen of a television, but there were a couple of publications like the ones in her washroom. What precisely one did with the dice and the red cups had not yet revealed itself to her.

She'd been watching one of these tapes every day for the past several days and they had yet to disappoint. The tales of the Nakatomi Building Siege, the Ghost Busters, and the love between Maverick and Goose had already been copied whole cloth into her collected parables of the First World.

She pulled a plastic square out of an unmarked sleeve and sounded out the title phonetically, trying to make sense of it "The Taming of Lara, Staring Lara Romany." The box gave her little insight into the films contents, so she decided to just start the film and see if it merited her time.

The film was unlike anything she'd ever seen. Aisha sat, transfixed as she watched the credits roll past proclaiming the film to be a Silverlight Pictures Production made by Arturo Genosa before she was met with a stream of images she'd never even imagined. She'd seen copulation before – all priestesses watched their Lord take the ones before they joined the collective – but her experience of human copulation had been largely conceptual. This was not like any conception she'd seen or imagined.

She felt heat rushing through her body that wasn't entirely limited to embarrassment as she sat, wide eyed, watching human forms entwined in ecstasy. Her heart rushed as she made eye contact with the almost impossibly beautiful Lara Romany, urges she'd suppressed for most of her adult life suddenly coming to the forefront. Was this how mating was conducted on the First World? She tired to imagine the Tau'ri she'd met thus far electing to put themselves in a position of similarly depraved abandon and couldn't quite visualize anyone in the specific role that Romany was choosing to place herself in.

She almost jumped out of her skin when her doorbell rang, yet another Tau'ri custom to which she was only starting to understand. On Nekheb one would just _enter_ the home of another, the idea that guests would be unwelcome or require announcement was entirely alien to her. She walked out of the living room and into the entryway, standing on tiptoe to look through the peephole on the door.

Aisha eagerly opened the door and allowed her guest to enter, thrilled beyond measure to be entertaining so august a personage. She bowed her head deferentially to the Jaffa as he entered, "Welcome, chose warrior of the Lord Warden. You humble me with your presence."

The Jaffa's eye twitched, contempt etched into every line of his stoic face. "I serve no god. I pray to no god. The Lord Warden has no claim to me."

"Nor would he ask for it." Aisha smiled brightly, keeping her eyes down to avoid making inappropriate eye contact with the Jaffa. "But men who do right and righteous acts are in service to the Lord Warden's aims, and he has addressed you - The Shol'va - as his equal."

The Jaffa grunted once but did not walk through the door. "I have been instructed to see to your comfort, puppet of the False Gods but do not mistake us for friends. You had a specific purpose in brining me here, what is it?"

Aisha opened her mouth to ask the question that had been at the forefront of her mind when she'd requested the Jaffa's presence when she realized that in her haste to greet the Jaffa, she had not turned off the film. She was quite certain that her entire body was blushing as she tried to stutter out an explanation for the pained noises of excitement coming from her living room as she Jaffa rose a single brow.

The Priestess wished she could have just melted through the floor as she said "Sorry… just… excuse me a moment!" and bolted from the door back into her living room to stop the film and turn off the television. She ejected the video and turned around to find the massive Jaffa in her living room. "I… I was doing research."

"Indeed." Replied the Jaffa, taking the black rectangle from Aisha and idly looking at the cover. "I presume that this research was not why you requested my presence."

"Not _that_ specific research." Aisha replied, feeling naked in a way she'd seldom felt. "I was hoping to get your advise on what I should be doing to educate myself in the customs of the First World. They trust you, they let you walk on their world."

"They do neither. Nor should they." Teal'c replied. "I am escorted at all times."

"But you have pledged yourself to them?" Aisha blinked. "Can you not walk the streets as one of them?"

"No." Teal'c replied, putting the plastic square down on the armrest of the couch. "And I would not consult the films of the Tau'ri as literal truth. The Tau'ri are people without gods. They invent tales to fill the void left by their absence."

"Are they like that?" Aisha pointed to the square abandoned by Teal'c. "Is there truly a Lara Romany out there?"

"I think that very few true things are learned from Television, especially from the things that exist." The Jaffa pursed his lips. "But there are stories worth learning. Far more valuable stories than the one on this tape."

Aisha didn't correct the Jaffa given that this was the most positive interaction they'd had thus far. Clearly, he hadn't been watching long enough if looking at Lara Romany's body hadn't registered as information worth having. "I have others, if you'd care to show me one worthier of my time?"

The Jaffa grunted, going through the cardboard box and separating out the plastic squares from one another. She wasn't entirely sure what his system for sorting them was, but quite a few ended up on the same plie as Lara's with the same dismissive snort. The man's mouth split into a wide grin as he pulled out three plastic squares from the box, "These will do."

He put the first of the tapes into the player and sat down on the sofa, indicating for Aisha to sit next to him. Aisha curled up with her feet beneath her as a text scroll sped past faster than she could comfortably read it.

 _Episode IV_

 _A NEW HOPE_


	4. Chapter 4

Amun fiddled with the door, annoyed that it was still refusing to close without making that infuriating squeaking noise. The cabinet was ancient - older than anyone cared to remember - but it had been a gift from Ra to the Lord Warden, so however practical it might have been to just replace the hinge for a new one Amun couldn't bring himself to do it. And while there were undoubtedly craftsmen more skilled at carpentry than he, Amun was loath to allow anyone else within his master's quarters.

The Lord Warden was an extremely private god. Open and honest to be sure, but the man valued his solace and privacy greatly. The royal apartments were the Lord Warden's refuge, his bastion where he allowed himself to be weak. The intimacy of these rooms was sacrosanct and Amun would die before he allowed something to break that sanctity.

This was the place where a god allowed himself to weep, hiding his tears from the world.

Amun applied oil to the hinge, tentatively moving the door back and forth. It quieted slightly, but still had more of a grind to it than Amun would have cared to have. A lifetime of experience told him, unfortunately, that the dull creaking was the best he could hope to achieve until his pride finally broke and he brought in a craftsman to work on it. He would likely tolerate the hinge for another day before that.

He sat down in the modest wooden chair next to the hearth, a sturdy but pain piece of furniture that was the only piece he allowed himself to sit upon without being specifically directed to do so by the Lord Warden. His master often insisted upon Amun making use of the seats intended for his betters, but Amun didn't dare make use of his God's belongings in the Lord Warden's absence.

He yelped in surprise as he felt something poking him in the back, pulling back a tapestry to reveal a child's wooden sword. Amun rolled his eyes as he pulled the carved blade from where it had been hidden, turning the "weapon" over in his hands to get a look at the carvings along the side. Amun sighed. "Of course."

The Lord Warden's endless habit of adopting orphans was one of his more exhausting oddities, but few proved quite so exhausting as the street urchin he'd purchased on Delmak. The child had no manners and even less sense, acting as though he were an equal of the gods themselves. Why the Lord Warden tolerated the child's insubordination was anyone's guess, but he'd forbade corporal punishment of the children in his care so Amun's resources to curb the boy's insolence were limited.

It seemed like the only one who the irritating little hellion would even listen to was the Lord Warden. Even then it seemed like the child was half convinced that he was cleverer than the God. He was constantly questioning his very god, asking "why?" as though the Lord Warden owed him answers to every third thing the man said. Bafflingly the Lord Warden often answered him as though it weren't patently absurd for a nine year old boy to make demands of a god.

The boy was a horrible influence on the Lord Warden's other adopted children. He'd practically infected the lot of them with the belief that the Lord Warden was their father now, rather than their patron.

At least the child had loyalty. Amun snorted, testing the weapon in his hand. Likely the boy had hidden his sword in the Lord Warden's room in the hope that he might be able to pull the blade out at a moment's notice if he needed to protect his "father" like the heroes from one of the Warden's stories. Amun smiled - the child did listen to the Lord Warden's parables remarkably well. The child had even picked a name from one of them.

Amun rubbed the carved name thoughtfully with his thumb, before putting the toy back where the boy had hidden it. The child's loyalty shouldn't be discouraged. "Far be it from me to tell you that you're not a warrior, Grayson."

He patted the tapestry fondly, grunting in irritation as he realized that he was thinking well of the boy. It was unbecoming, unacceptable even! The child actually referred to Amun and Ul'tak as his uncles and Muminah as his Aunt as though they were all family - all equals. Amun shivered thinking back to the goblet his master had handed him.

"I'm not equal - I can't be. Men can't be equal to the gods." He fought back bitterness, his own childhood under Heka had not been quite so blessed as than enjoyed by the Orphans in the Lord Warden's care. He exhaled slowly, doing his best to push back the memories of the times before. Heka was dead. The Warden now reigned - good conquered evil and all was well.

He did not pretend to understand what confluence of magics had purged his master of the darkness that had plagued him, but he sent a thousand prayers to the universe for casting the evil from his heart. Life was good now. The people were happy. Amun was happy.

He couldn't remember a time when he had been happy, not since he'd been sold to Heka as an infant. There were times when he'd been proud and times when he hadn't been scared. But he'd never been truly happy. He'd never felt free.

The Lord Warden insisted that Amun was free now, that Amun could choose whatever he wanted. But what choice did he have? What other life would one like him live? He'd been bred and broken to serve as a Lo'tar. Without that what manner of cretin was Amun?

It was too much. Anything but serving the Lord Warden would be too different.

Then again, things were different. Nekheb was different. Even embroiled in endless war and reeling from the horrors of battle, the city was more full of life and laughter than he'd ever thought could be possible. Amun had gone to the market last week on a whim, only to find the place embroiled in a grete fete thrown in celebration of the Lord Warden. The people of Nekheb were celebrating the Lord Warden without it being solicited by the clergy.

They loved their God.

So did Amun.

He wiped moisture from his eye as he pulled back the cloth from the top of the hamper containing his mid-day meal, and chewed a piece of well seasoned meat. Licking his fingers after, Amun made contented smacking noises with his lips as he made sure to savor every bite. The spices warmed his mouth and throat with a comforting burn that pleasantly as he ate a dollop of white sauce on flatbread out of a ceramic bowl.

He blushed as he pulled up the last bit of bread to find a flower at the bottom of the hamper. It was a small token of affection from the cook who'd made his meal, but he was still conceptually getting used to the idea of being an eligible bachelor. The flower's blue petals were a polite indication of a wish for greater than mere friendship. Most men his age wouldn't bat an eye at an innocent gesture of interest, but Amun hadn't the foggiest what to do when a woman flirted with him.

Courting has always been the affair of other people, a seemingly exhausting dance for men without his holy mandate. As a eunuch Amuns interactions with women hadn't even been particularly complicated. The household staff were mostly servants pooled from those women who'd lacked the proper temperament to remain in the clergy, those who'd wanted families or who'd had crises of faith requiring they leave the clergy but not service to the divine. There were some intermingled slaves bought at market, but the inner sanctum of the Lord Warden was a place for believers.

He'd spent decades with these women as their peer, listening to their problems and encouraging their success. Now that his manhood was restored far too many of them were immediately eager to court him. There were times - brief times - where he almost wished that the Lord Warden hadn't consented to allow his restored manhood. Life was simpler when one didn't have to try and navigate the confusing landscape of human pair bonding rituals.

He was regularly finding himself reduced to a jibbering mess of the man he knew himself to be, overcome with the simple proximity of women he'd worked with since childhood. Innocent gestures of affection were becoming wholesale liabilities to social interaction. A woman had simply touched his arm that morning and she might as well have struck him with a Zat-blast given the jolt of shock it had sent through his body.

It was embarrassing, these were their problems most men worked out in there adolescence not their adulthood. He'd spent so much of his life without gender that now that one had been thrust upon him that he found himself lacking the proper mentors to whom he might turn in order to figure out what one was supposed to do with one's self. He was quickly becoming a voyeur of young Jaffa soldiers in the midst of their training in the hopes that he might gain some measure of clarity by proximity. It wasn't working particularly well.

His glassy eyed stare was only half focused on the room around him as he grew lost in his thoughts, roving across the room for other items in need of tending or mending. He idly considered an ugly little statue of a man on the Lord Warden's desk, noting it's bulbous face and stitched clothing before it occurred to him that the ugly statue was staring back.

He just about jumped out of his own skin when the statue blinked, fighting the urge to move with every fibre of his being as the little man waddled across the table towards him. It scurried along, taking care not to trip over its long beard as it walked, climbing over dinner ware and books with surprising grace given their relative size.

It was clearly a creature from the land of Sun and Snow - though not one that Amun had yet seen. He was knowledgeable enough to realize that the creature's stature would bear little relevance to the potential danger such a thing could pose. Creatures of the other world often seemed harmless, right up to the point they killed their prey.

He wanted to cower from the little man as it hopped down from the table and sauntered up to him, flinching as the tiny thing walked up to his feet. The man couldn't have been taller than the span of Amun's hand. He had to crane his neck to get a proper look as he examined the Lo'tar's sandals. The little man pulled at his beard pensively as he strolled around Amun's feet, examining the shoes from every angle before grunting approvingly. "You take good care of your shoes."

"Thank you." Amun replied, looking for the trap in the demon's words and finding none. The demons of Sun and Snow could only speak truth. It was known.

"I had hoped you would have worse shoes so that I could demonstrate my skills." The little man spoke with a mixture of surprise and disappointment. "I do not often find those requiring only some of my work. I will have to make you an entirely new set of shoes for you to understand my worth."

"You… repair shoes?" Amun looked at the tiny demon, trying to reconcile the stories told by firelight of demon soldiers of fire and frost with the miniscule creature pulling a measuring tape from it's pocket to measure the side of his foot.

"My people fix many things. We sew. We clean. We cook. It is our way." The little man pulled out pipe from his apron as he started annotating the measurements he was taking of Amun's foot. "Do you prefer a high arch to the sole or are you more of a mid arch person? Your current sandals have no arch at all, but that looks uncomfortable."

"Am I what?" The Lo'Tar hadn't the foggies idea what the little demon was talking about.

"Ah! Good, then you have never had a proper fitting? Then I will be able to show my worth." The little man snapped his fingers and the sheet of paper disappeared. "A proper set of shoes will be the price then."

"I have agreed to no price." Amun stated emphatically. "We have no bargain."

"I am no swindler." The little man waved away Amun's concerns. "My people have no patience for the games of Sidhe. I will give you a glorious set of shoes in exchange for you listening to a proposal. I promise that I will take no action, nor tolerate any action to be taken, that would harm you or those you care about in the brokering of this deal. I give you shoes, you will give me time? It is agreed?"

"But… I have shoes already." Amun replied to the little man.

"Not as fine as these though." The little man pointed to Amun's right, drawing Amun's attention to a cluster of little men and women Amun would have sworn hadn't been there only moments ago. There were dozens of tiny men crawling over a pair of fine leather boots, ascending the shoes like a carpenter working on a multi-story building. Next to them, women sat cooking some sort of stew in a tiny pot - tending to children smaller than Amun''s thumb.

"They are fine boots." Amun replied, not sure what do with the village worth of demons suddenly surrounding him.

"Not just fine. Enchanted." Replied the little man. "They will always be shined. They will always be comfortable. Most importantly, they will help you find the fastest route to where you wish to be. They are very good shoes."

"How long of a proposal?" Amun asked, looking at his reflection in the mirrored surface of the polished black leather.

"Not long. If you tell me to leave, I will stop talking and leave. The shoes will be yours." Replied the tiny man.

"Ok." Amun replied, feeling a rush of adrenaline. This was the sort of decision a man made. Taking charge, dealing with danger. This was the sort of thing the Lord Warden rewarded.

The tiny man puffed his pipe twice. "My people want to work for you."

"The Kingdoms of Sun and Snow have treaties with the Lord Warden already." Amun blinked he tentatively picked up the boots, removing his own sandals and pulling up the Furling made clothing. They fit more perfectly than anything he'd ever hoped to own.

"I do not want to work for the Lord Warden." The tiny man snorted derisively. "I want to work for you."

The Lo'tar paused in the process of lacing his boots, making eye contact with the little man in shock. "Me?"

"You." Replied the little man. "My people need a home. You are the head of this household. If you let us live here we will clean and care for all the shoes in this palace. Your household will be orderly as none have been since the Folly. We will serve you and protect the secrets of your home as though it were our own."

"What do you get out of it?" Amun asked nervously.

"Have you seen the state of the shoes in this palace?" The man replied in a scandalized whisper as though it were self evident. "There are thousands of them, and they're all damaged. We could fix them! Broken shoes, dirty corners, many things there are that we can fix."

"But what do you want?" Amun repeated the question.

"There are broken shoes." Replied the little man, as though confused by Amun's inquiry.

"Demon, are you telling me that you've come to enter into a pact with me to haunt my household because you can't stand the idea of poorly tended shoes?" Amun laughed.

"Shoes, rooms, cupboards, there is just so much clutter." Replied the tiny man. "We would take food to support ourselves, but we do not eat much." He gestured to the thimble full of stew.

"So for the price of letting you eat less than the rats mange in a day, your people would clean and tend to the palace." Amun asked.

"But you must never tell anyone that we are here, or we will unmake the work that we have done." Replied the tiny man.

"... Why?" The Lo'tar inquired.

"It is how things are done." The tiny man asserted, puffing at his pipe and holding out a miniscule hand. "Do we have an accord?"

Amun considered the tiny creature, seeking the trap in the beasts words. He found none. Nervously he reached out his pinky and shook the tiny man's hand. The man grinned and disappeared in a puff of smoke along with the entire village worth of little people.

"I am Tikk. Speak my name and I will come." Spoke the evaporating whisps.

Amun stood up, the boots his only proof that he'd not just imagined the entire affair, and walked back to the squeaking cabinet. He opened it slowly and smiled broadly.

There was no more squeaking to be heard. Well, Amun supposed if he was to be the most trusted manservant of a God of Magic, he might as well had a bit of magic in his own corner. He leaned back in his chair and was gratified to feel the weight of the child's toy hidden in the tapestry behind him.

Things really were better now.


	5. Chapter 5

Set After the events of Shattering Occam's Razor

Gentleman John Marcone had not expected a telephone call that morning about the Senator's residence. His appointment of a surveillance team over the man's apartment was a largely symbolic gesture. He did it because not having done it would have been a sign of weakness or having admitted defeat, but he was entirely cognizant of what an utter and colossal waste of manpower it was to try and involve himself in the Senator's business.

Kinsey had proven to be utterly beyond Marcone's normal methods. The man couldn't be bribed as he was already richer than God and blackmail had proven a useless gesture. It wasn't that there wasn't any dirt on the man, he was more crooked than any politician Marcone had ever met. Unfortunately the actual application of any potential blackmail against the Senator would irk his allies.

Marcone was not foolish enough to bring his organization into the spotlight for the groups Kinsey worked with. Kinsey held the purse strings for a number of "contractors" working for the US government who could only charitably be called mercenaries. His people were good at tracking down information, but even they struggled to keep up with the constantly changing shell companies and shifting bank accounts involved in their operation.

Losing Kinsey would likely mean the loss of millions or even billions of dollars in DoD funding for groups whose stock in trade was the annihilation of entire governments. He was careful to let the Senator know that he was a power in the State, but avoided overtly angering the man. If pressed, Kinsey had the required resources to make Marcone's life substantially more difficult than he cared to deal with.

Kinsey was a frankly terrifying man, if Marcone was being honest with himself. The Senator was so utterly and devotedly committed to self-delusion that he could justify any combination of actions resulting in immediate benefits to himself within the auspices of some sort of "higher calling" or "greater cause" to provide a post-hoc moral framework for whatever he wanted to do in the first place. Marcone's line of work had introduced him to many men like that. Few had the sort of faculty for interpersonal action and feigned empathy required to make them more than mindless thugs.

The man made Marcone's skin crawl. He had precisely the right personality to have excelled as a human trafficker or fixer, paired with the full resources of the United States Government behind him. Even if Marcone had been so inclined, it wouldn't even be worth effort to kidnap one of the Senator's relatives. Marcone was convinced that Kinsey would have just let the person be murdered to boost his popularity in the coming election.

He didn't even have the common courtesy to have an interesting vice. The most exciting thing Marcone's people had ever witnessed him doing had been attending a benefit for a local youth group where he tried, and spectacularly failed, to play basketball. Petty though it might have been, Marcone went out of his way to make sure that footage made the news.

So, when the men he'd contracted to watch the Senator's apartment insisted that something had "gone down" at the Senator's apartment that they weren't willing to discuss over the phone, Marcone's first instinct had been to push the meeting with them back to Thursday. There was an infinitude of tasks more pressing than getting briefed on the rigidly boring Senator, especially given the void left after Harry Dresden burned down the Velvet Room.

Thankfully, the persistent rumors surrounding Harry Dresden left most of Chicago's underbelly with the impression that it had been Marcone who'd ordered the scorched earth methodology employed by the wild Wizard of Chicago. In truth, Marcone hadn't the foggiest idea why Dresden had seen fit to take out his largest competitor in Chicago, though he suspected it was likely something as simple as "because someone pissed the Wizard off royally," but he wasn't about to let his people know that. Hendricks knew, of course. Hendricks could be trusted, implicitly.

So, when Hendricks emphatically asserted, "No, Boss. This really can't wait." Marcone took him seriously.

The boy Hendricks led into the room looked pathetically small by comparison to Marcone's bodyguard and confidant. Most people who weren't professional bodybuilders looked miniscule next to the former Marine, but the boy was slender even for a teenager. Professional peeping toms didn't need to have much in the way of upper body strength.

The boy was a caramel-skinned lad of apparently Latino heritage. He was perhaps sixteen, wearing clothing that bore all the signs of having been given to him as a hand me down by some relative. It was faded and ill fitting, bearing the logo of a local restaurant that had gone out of business five years earlier if Marcone's memory served. He was doing a decent job of trying to seem tough, but Marcone could tell that the boy was terrified.

It seemed likely that the body had been the unlucky victim when the survelience team had drawn straws. If they felt Marcone was going to like what the boy was bringing he'd have been seeing all five of them, rather than only one of the five people who lived in the apartment Marcone rented in a building adjacent to the Senator's penthouse.

"Present your report." Marcone steepled his fingers, resting his elbows on his desk. He'd made sure to put his desk on a raised platform within the construction site that was currently serving as his office, it put anyone with whom he spoke at a disadvantage. They had to look up to see him, and virtually had to shout to be heard over the workmen all around him. Any law enforcement officers with a directional mike would be hard pressed to record anything of use over the sounds of construction, even if they were wearing a wire. And that was assuming someone could get past Hendricks with a wire to start with.

He walked up to Marcone's desk and started laying out photos. The first photos were of what looked less like a guard detail and more like a full military occupation of downtown Chicago. Senator Kinsey's apartment building had been locked down tighter than fort Knox, complete with guard posts and – Marcone blinked briefly in shock. That couldn't be right.

"Tanks." Hendricks jabbed a meaty finger down to the photo. "Something is going down that was serious enough for the Senator to ask for someone to mobilize Abrams to Chicago, and for that someone to actually say 'Yes' to something that insane."

"Helicopters too." The teenager interjected, tossing photographs of several Apache helicopters circling around the neighborhood. "There was more but we stopped being able to watch after a while. The fire department evacuated the building."

"Why?" Marcone kept his face a scrupulous blank mask while internally he was looking at the photos in utter bafflement, trying to keep his face as stoic as possible. These people weren't from the National Guard, these were active deployable units. The sort of unit that weren't even legally able to operate on US soil without a Presidential say-so under the auspices of an imminent threat to national security.

"They said a bomb went off in the Senator's apartment. But it wasn't like no bomb I've ever seen." The boy held up a photo of a bright white pillar of light shooting up from the Senator's apartment and into the sky. "They started evacuating the building and searching every building in the neighborhood for more 'bombs' that the terrorists might have left."

Marcone looked to Hendricks expectantly. The man shrugged. "I got no idea, Boss. If it's a new group in our territory I've never heard of them."

"Unfortunate." Marcone spoke the word the way most men used vile oaths. One of the greatest strengths one could apply in maintaining a criminal enterprise was to be well appraised of any threats to the stability of one's domain. He was reasonably confident that he had adequate information on the existing political factions within Chicago's underworld, but one couldn't plan for every eventuality. If this was some sort of political group or lone-wolf terrorist, even the best network of informants might not have caught it. "Did they use a name? Something to indicate the origin of the attack?"

"The cops helping the soliders never said who caused it." The boy offered eagerly, glad to be in Marcone's good graces. "But something had them rattled even before that light show. Arguing with them felt like a quick way to get shot. The others are asking people from the Senator's building to see if any of them saw anything while they're waiting to be let back into the apartment."

"Hell of an operation, to force a whole Chicago block to evacuate." Hendricks grunted. "Takes a lot of pull to do that."

"Five blocks." The boy interjected. "They evacuated everything within five blocks of the building. They were searching people for cameras too – didn't let anyone leave with them. I had to smuggle out the photos, it was pure luck that I'd already printed them out and hid them in my textbook before they evacuated us."

Marcone frowned. It would take a profane amount of manpower to even begin to try that in the sort of upscale neighborhood the Senator lived in. Logistically it wasn't that hard, but one had to be willing to piss off essentially everyone with money and influence in Illinois to do it. There would be consequences to this for the person who initiated it.

"Yes sir." Said the boy, nodding emphatically. "Five blocks in every direction from the building sir."

Marcone arched a brow in pleased surprise. "You were good to bring this to me. Go back to the others. Find out what you can, and have someone report to me in two hours. I want regular status updates on what's happening. In person, I don't want to risk anyone catching on to my interest in this matter."

"Yes sir." The boy smiled, giving another nod that was closer to a bow. "I won't let you down sir."

The boy walked out of Marcone's place of business, the sort of spring in his step that could only come from the overconfidence and illusionary omnipotence of youth. Hendricks waited for the boy to actually leave before letting lose a tirade of swear words. "Five blocks? Five fucking blocks? That's thousands of people they moved at fucking gunpoint!"

"Our police and FBI contacts haven't indicated any specific threats that might impact operations." Marcone considered the matter, scratching at his close-cropped hair in confusion. "I feel like at least one of them should have caught wind of something requiring a midwestern re-enactment of Desert Storm."

Marcone turned right to the various televisions stacked to his right. The 24 hour news networks were played in perpetuity while he did business, as well as a couple of channels showing updates to the stock market. Precisely none of them had even hinted at a full military invasion of Chicago. "Someone is keeping this quiet. Someone very, very important."

"Who is important enough to actually do that?" Hendricks grunted. "Other than the President, I mean. The freaking Governor can only ask for the National Guard."

"I don't know." Marcone replied, the very real possibility that it was a Presidential Order more alarming than he cared to admit. "There is too much happening in my city lately that I don't know about. Too many moving pieces."

"You want to do something about this, Boss?" Hendricks asked, the unease in his voice palpable. He didn't like the idea of doing anything that might risk running afoul of anyone serving in the armed forces. Frankly, Marcone didn't either – they'd both served as Marines before returning to the civilian sector, after all.

"No." Marcone mused, considering the matter. "It's premature to take any actions regarding this. If it is a terrorist threat we'd only be getting in the way of bomb defusal efforts. Moreover I don't want my operations getting conflated with a terrorist threat, even tangentially. We'll keep track of it for now, but I think that we're better off focusing on consolidating the operations formerly controlled by Bianca. She didn't follow the rules, and I want to make sure that its understood that anyone who wants to continue operating in my city needs to discontinue the more disreputable practices she allowed."

"Sure thing, Boss." Hendricks nodded, putting down the image of the pillar of light as though it were no longer worth his interest. Marcone liked that about Hendricks, the man never questioned Marcone's plans. When they'd both been in the Marines and Hendricks had been appointed as Marcone's commanding officer, it had come as a breath of fresh air when the newly minted Lieutenant actually listened to Marcone – apparently understanding the reality of Marcone's seniority of experience if not seniority of positional authority. Since leaving the Marines, the two had stayed together – Hendricks' choice to follow Marcone into whatever career he entered almost a foregone conclusion.

"Thank you, Hendricks." Marcone collected the photos and tucked them into the pocket of his jacket. He wasn't sure what to do with this knowledge yet but having the visual reminder with him would help as his thoughts percolated. "Is there anything else I need to know?"

"The Wizard isn't doing well. It wasn't in your daily brief, I had to weasel it out of the team we've got on him – but their worried. I mean more worried than just in general to be following the sort of guy who can burn down a building with his brain." Hendricks shrugged. "Something bad happened at the Velvet Room. Don't know what, exactly, but he's doing bad."

"Define bad." Marcone groaned. The last thing he needed was for Harry Dresden to start losing it.

"Somewhere between a sixteen-year-old girl who just got dumped before prom and Private Pyle." Hendricks cracked his knuckles one by one, working his way through the joints one by one. It was a nervous tick that showed up when the man was genuinely worried. "It sounds like PTSD. A major case of survivor's guilt."

"Well, he did kill all of Bianca's crew and a sizable number of her guests." Marcone snorted. "Anyone would walk away from that a bit shaken."

"We made sure the police didn't go after him for it, like you said Boss. It would be bad for your rep if 'your' hitter went to jail for axing your rival, but I'm worried that the guy is going to axe himself soon." Hendricks grunted.

"Ah – that would be unfortunate." Marcone groaned. Harry Dresden's entirely undeserved reputation as a hitter within the criminal underworld was equal parts useful and infuriating. Harry Dresden was vocally and pathologically opposed to everything that Marcone stood for, but that same pathology meant that he was more interested in Marcones rivals than Marcone himself. So long as the Wizard continued to busy himself with literal monsters, Marcone could be reasonably confident in his own safety from the Wizard's wrath.

As long as Marcone fanned the flames behind the rumors suggesting that Dresden was on his payroll and Dresden continued to destroy entire rival organizations single handedly, the Wizard could deny his connection to Marcone wholesale and everyone would assume that the Wizard was simply employing an elaborate cover story. The side effect of this, however, was that Marcone was as institutionally invested in Dresden as he might have been if Dresden were actually employed within his organization.

Harry Dresden was an irascible, unmanageable, and ungrateful member of his organization but in order for Marcone to capitalize upon the Dresden's rumored position as Marcone's deadliest assassin, Marcone was required to maintain the illusion that Dresden was in his employ. In effect this meant covertly acting in the Wizard's welfare, without his knowledge or consent.

While Marcone never actually paid any of Harry's bills, he ensured that the organizations requiring the Wizard's bills be paid were 'predisposed' to allowing the Wizard additional time or unreasonably equitable payment plans. There were several bodies in the Great Lakes of Marcone's rivals who'd had the audacity to try to assassinate the Wizard to send Marcone a message. The Wizard Dresden was not a tool Marcone would allow to be removed from his arsenal without due cause.

If the Wizard was becoming mentally unstable, however, there wasn't much Marcone could hope to do about it. Dresden loathed Marcone. Any effort Marcone would attempt to help the man was likely to just send the man into an even more dangerous emotional spiral. "A pity, the man had much potential."

"He's not dead yet." Marcone's second in command grunted. "If he does anything drastic, in public I mean, you want us to do anything?"

"Drastic to himself or to others?" Marcone inquired.

"Yes." Replied the redhead.

"You are too soft-hearted, my old friend." Marcone laughed.

"The man's an ass." Hendricks growled, crossing his arms uncomfortably. "But we've seen too many guys who've seen too much, you know? I don't like the idea of someone going down like that. It aint' right."

"Fine." Marcone nodded, earning a half-smile from Hendricks. It didn't take much work to find a Marine who'd come back home and been unable to deal with peace. After the constant adrenaline rush of being "in it," returning to the day to day doldrum of a 9 to 5 just didn't do it for many people. Some re-enlisted, some – like Marcone and Hendricks – sought out dangerous activities at home, and many more just collapsed under the psychic weight of having done and seen too much. Dresden was precisely the sort of pathological boy scout who risked crumbling under the reality of doing terrible but necessary things. "Suicide watch for the Wizard, and someone to put him down if he goes rabid. Make sure they've got someone on call of the distractingly female variety to discourage the former and a team with enough firepower to do the job if it's the latter."

"Sure, thing Boss." Hendricks chuckled. "You know I think this fucker might be more expensive to not have on payroll than it would be to just hire him."

"Don't think it hadn't run through my mind." Marcone agreed emphatically. "But that man refuses to be forced into anything he doesn't think falls within his rigid view of right and wrong."

"You think he had anything to do with that pillar of light?" Henricks inquired. "Feels like the sort of bad ju-ju that goes with the Wizard."

"No… not unless the man can be in two places at once." Marcone disagreed. "Did anyone report him leaving his apartment?"

"Nah, but for all I know he can wiggle his fingers and be somewhere else." Hendricks chewed his lip in irriation. "I hate this bibbidy-boppity-bullshit."

"I still don't think that it was him." Marcone shook his head. "He might have burned the place down or blasted out the windows, but Kinsey is exactly the sort of sanctimonious prick that would appeal to the Wizard's narrow view of the world. That the Senator's openly anti-organized crime would only make it less likely for him to be the source of this."

"I still think we should find out what group did this. I don't like people thinking that they can blow things up in Chicago." The beefy man spoke firmly. "I'm not suggesting that we involve ourselves in anything overt, but we hear things that our contacts in Law Enforcement don't always know about."

"Hendricks – are you proposing that we aid law enforcement in the prosecution of these terrorists?" Marcone chuckled.

"Nah, Boss. I'm suggesting that we find them and put their heads on fucking pikes along the warf." Hendricks grunted. "We've got investments in that same freaking building."

Marcone grinned wolfishly. Hendricks knew precisely the magic words to get Marcone on board with a more proactive solution.

"You are referring to the family of Miss August, I presume?" Marcone replied. Miss August was one of his more prominent madams, catering to the rich and famous. Her girls operated out of their own residences rather than a centralized facility, and ensuring that they were housed in sufficiently upscale lodging had been a primary selling point in marketing them to their intended clientele. Men of means tended to question the morality of hiring a prostitute less often when that prostitute appeared of equal or greater means by comparison.

Miss August was a particularly efficient caretaker for her girls. She kept them off drugs, made sure they were investing their money rather than squandering it, and she made sure that the girls had adequate daycare for their children while they were working. In practice this meant that she had somewhere between eight and twenty of their children in her palatial apartment at all times. Her palatial apartment two floors immediately below the senator's residence.

Bombs didn't discriminate between the old and the young.

"I admit I was remiss in not making that connection." Marcone pursed his lips in thought. "Use some of the discretionary fund we were saving to contract a hitter on Bianca. I think that our friends in the FBI might be able to give us a hint of where to start."

Violence, even potential violence, against children was a sore spot for Marcone. Marcone had one rule above all else. No kids, no matter what you did in Marcone's territory it couldn't involve kids – even accidentally. Kids were verboten to the crime of Chicago.

Someone wasn't paying attention to the rules. Marcone couldn't have that.

This was, after all, Marcone's City.


	6. Chapter 6

Meredith Rodney McKay dropped his coffee on the ground, walking through the puddle entirely uncaring of the mess he'd made. The world seemed to be spinning as his heart beat with a furious staccato that seemed to be in danger of soon ripping out of his chest. He walked through a knee high display of magazines to get closer to the television, scattering copies of people and time out in a soggy mess as he tripped over his feet. The man running the kiosk, an Eastern European of possibly Slavic descent, didn't seem to notice. He was fixated on the same thing Rodney was - a glowing mushroom cloud filmed on a live feed from Siberia.

Rodney was a child of the Cold War. He'd grown up, like most children, with the general assumption that a conflagration between America and Russia would - if ever executed - end the world. Not metaphorically, not theoretically - someone ever dropping another nuclear bomb for anything other than a planned test was flirting with the Apocalypse. He supposed it had been a decent portion of why he'd been as devoted to his studies of nuclear physics and astrophysics as he'd been. By understanding the thing he'd been afraid of he'd hoped that he might control his fear of it.

But there was no reasonable man who understood the actual metrics of nuclear warfare and felt anything but pure terror for its actuality. 1991 had been a good year for Rodney. Good for the world, to be sure, but Rodney felt particularly unique in his singular perspective into just how close to the brink the world had really been. He'd run the models. He'd planned the math. He understood the systems involved in nuclear warfare so well that he'd considered himself the absolute and uncontested world expert on why it should panic any reasonable person.

Knowledge was a prescription for pessimism, but Rodney had allowed himself to be suckered into the narrative that the Cold War had ended. And with it, the fear of atomic warfare was an artefact of a more savage time. Nine years felt like a lifetime ago. His naive presumption that all was well felt like the thoughts of someone else substantially less clever and informed than he.

Today's Rodney couldn't think of anything other than the worst case possible scenarios as he reconciled himself with the inevitable, horrifying truth.

Someone had nuked Russia.

Rodney's eye twitched as he tried to decide what the first thing he needed to do would be. What did he even have time to do? If there were missiles inbound there was no possible way that he wasn't currently in the target radius of at least one of them. Why hadn't he just taken an earlier damn flight? Had sleeping in really been worth being stuck in Heathrow Airport, contemplating his own mortality.

He had to call someone, do something. But what was there to do?

The payphones were a madhouse, he could see that from here. People were practically climbing over each other for the chance to use one of the remaining telephones. Only half of them had been properly in service to begin with. Unless he wanted to get trampled, there was no way he was getting anywhere near those phones.

He eyed the space behind the news agent's desk, spying a decorative Mickey Mouse telephone behind it. An old thing, well worn enough that the mouse was missing an ear and most of his nose, it seemed functional enough. "Sir, uh - Sir!"

The man gave Dr McKay a sidelong glance, not saying a word as his lips narrowed to a barely visible line between the man's thick bush of whiskers. He wiped the front of his tracksuit dismissively, displaying the thick mess of gold chains wrapped along his neck-line as he adjusted the garment.

"Sir, can I use your phone?" Rodney inquired eagerly.

"Amenities for customers only." The man grunted.

"Excuse me?" Rodney replied in a voice that he assured himself wasn't a girlish cry of disgust.

"You are not customer. You are lookey-loo." The man ephasized the "oo" sounds with a guttural "u" that felt like it belonged in a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon.

"The word is ending and you're getting shitty over fifty cents worth of gum?" Rodney growled.

"Pence, not cents" The newsagent replied idly. "In Uk is five pence."

"For the - take it." Rondey grabbed a candy bar at random, reaching for his wallet before squinting at the wrapper. It was a foreign candy, with pictures of fruit on the side. "Uh… is there citrus in this?"

"Is what?" The new's agent looked away from the TV, actually giving Rodney his full attention for the first time.

"Uh… Lemon? Lime? Orange? You know… citrus?" Rodney mimed a lime with his thumb and forefinger. "I'm allergic to citrus."

"You want nutrition thesis or you want phone?" The man rolled his eyes.

"Righ... " Rodney deflated, he hated spending money on a candy bar that he was pretty sure would kill him if he ever took it out of the wrapper. He handed over the five coins, pointing to the phone. "Can I use the phone now?"

"Local call only." Replied the man as he plopped the plastic mouse on the counter.

"Oh come on! It's the end of the world man. Let me call my sister." Rodney groaned.

"Phone will only make local call. Plan does not cover long distance." Replied the newsagent.

"For the love of - give me back my money!" Rondey protested, thrusting brandishing the candy bar back at the Eastern European man. "I only bought the damn thing so that I could call Canada."

"You want to make international call? You buy telephone card." Replied the newsagent.

"And how much will that cost me?" Rondey sighed, pulling money from his wallet.

"Five hundred pound sterling." The man grinned wolfishly.

"That's robbery!" Rondey snarled.

"Supply and demand." The man crossed his arms. "I have supply. You have demand. Pay up or piss off."

Rondey was actually considering the man when someone handed him a little, plastic card. He looked down at the item in his hands in confusion before looking over at the man next to him. He hadn't even noticed that the asian tourist had been there, let alone that he'd been patiently listening to his argument with the newsagent.

He grinned widely, speaking with a thick Japanese accent. He was a little imp of a man, with a shock of white hair and laughing eyes. He was leaning heavily on an antique cane that seemed entirely incongruous with the floral pattern hawaiian shirt jeans he was wearing "Please, use this.."

"Thanks." Rodney smiled back, looking guiltily at the telephone card. "Don't you have someone you need to call?"

"I told my family that they are loved this morning, and every morning that I can remember. They will forgive me for waiting till tomorrow to say the words again." The little man chuckled, apparently greatly amused at some private joke.

Not wanting to give himself time to reconsider the man's offer he picked up the red phone out of Mickey's hand, dialing his sister's phone number from memory. Several tries were required before he managed to connect to an outbound line, given how the entire world seemed to be trying to call someone at once. It rang, echoing with the delay inevitable in an international call. He hoped against hope that the call didn't drop, his breath caught in his throat as he waited moment by moment.

One ring. God, please let her have remembered.

Two rings. He'd left her specific instructions in the bag. If anything like this were to ever happen she was supposed to follow the instructions. She'd laughed it off when he'd handed it to her, but she hadn't turned down the bag.

Three rings. Rodney prayed to a god he didn't believe in, trying to calculate the time difference in his head. It would be mid-day. There was no reason why she wouldn't have been at home with the new baby. She didn't watch a lot of TV but she liked to leave it on in the background while she did chores.

Four rings. The baby - Christ the baby! Rodney couldn't bare to think of anything happening to his niece. He wasn't a great uncle. Feelings and family had never been his strong suit, but he'd die before he let anything happen to the little sprogget.

On the fifth ring the machine picked up, the tape deck automatically playing the message of his sister's voice. It was not the message he'd grown accustomed to hearing when he called his sister, but a new one. He sighed deeply with relief - she had listened. Thank God.

"Mer - if you're listening to this, you don't have to worry. I'm going to the cabin, I promise to pick up some fresh vegetables and seeds on the way like you asked me to do. Now, stop worrying and get your butt up to Fort Resolution so that I can stop worrying about you, ya big goof." There was a sad little edge of laughter to her voice, his sister was one of the few people on earth clever enough to actually understand how grim the situation actually was. Their joint plan for what to do if there ever was a global nuclear war had been more of a thought exercise for them up till today - a game that had amused her and comforted Rodney. "Please Mer - come home."

"I'm coming Sis." Rodney spoke after the beep, not ever truly expecting his sister to have cause to return to her home and hear it but hoping that it might be heard. "I'm coming home."

He hung up the phone, wiping tears from his eyes as the Japanese man patted him on the shoulder. The man spoke in his thickly accented English, though it would have been a lie to call the man's diction anything but fluent - his mannerisms were inescapably Japanese. "Feeling better?"

"Yes," Rodney smiled at the slight man, sincerely grateful. "Thank you."

When Rodney tried to hand the man back his calling card, he shook his head and said. "There is another who needs it more than I."

"Who?" Rodney blinked.

The Japanese man turned to the newsagent, taking the card from Rodney and holding it out to him. "You should call home as well."

"Blyat! Do I look like I need your charity?" The newsagent's eye twitched as he thumbed over his shoulder at the display of calling cards. "I'm drowning in calling cards."

"You will be drowning in debt as well, if you charge yourself what you threatened to charge this man to call home." The Japanese man waved to a group of people rushing towards the news stand, apparently having realized that there was a telephone not currently in use.

"Who do you think you are?" The man growled contemptuously.

"The man offering you a chance to tell your family that you love them." The Japanese man smiled kindly, sincerity in his every move as he offered the card again. "Finances should never be a barrier to human dignity."

"I … Blyat " The man took the card, deflating under the insistent kindless of the Japanese tourist looking at it, seemingly unsure what to do with now that he had it. "I - I do not have anyone to call."

"Nonsense." The man took a little book out of his pocket and scrawled on a page, ripping it from the book and handing it to the other man. "You can call my friend Sanya. He would appreciate knowing that someone wanted to make sure he is ok."

"But… he's your friend, not mine." The man looked at the paper in utter bafflement.

"And I know he is well already." The man tapped his nose conspiratorially. "But he could use more friends who know how to listen, and I'm sure you miss talking in Russian."

"You are a remarkably strange little man." The newsagent replied. Shaking his head in annoyance as the first of the newcomers asked to use the phone. Rodney's eyes bugged as the man just started handing out calling cards to anyone who asked to use the telephone.

"I could use a coffee." The Japanese man said to Rodney, pointing at the spilled mess on the ground. "Would you care to join me?"

"I really should get another flight." Rodney politely declined.

"You and everyone else in England." The man barked in amusement. "But it appears that there are greater plans at work than yours or mine."

Rodney groaned, grinding his teeth as he looked up at the bank of monitors on the wall. Every single flight had a huge, red "canceled" written next to it. Of course it did, Rodney realized, the UK wouldn't want civilians flights cluttering their airspace while they were worrying about a potential nuclear defense. He was trapped in the UK.

He said a word that earned him a sharp smack to the arm from the old man. "Language!" The man cheerfully chided, mixing his "L" and "R" sounds. "There are children here."

"We're in an airport after a nuclear attack. I'm sure they're learning plenty of new words today, even without my help." Rodney replied sardonically.

"A man needs to maintain serenity in hard times." He waved to the chaotic mess of worried people wandering the terminal. Clusters of men and women huddled together, in various stages of fear, confusion, horror, and despair. A Russian couple sat at the window, cradling each other in their arms and openly weeping as a bearded man in Saudi Arabian clothing did his able best to comfort them without being able to speak their language. His rhythmic sing-song prayer seemed to be at least conveying his intent, even if they were separated by vocabulary. "We can only do what we are able, but if we are lost to passion we miss the chance to do good."

"You'll pardon me for being a bit overwhelmed by a damn nuke." Rodney hissed. "I mean, can you comprehend how horrific those things truly are?"

The man's eyes flashed in brief anger, but his warm patience wavered only slightly as he replied, "I was a teenager in 1945. I assure you, I comprehend."

Rondey blanched, utterly mortified. He sputtered, trying to find the appropriate apology for his arrogance as he internally berated himself for having so pigheadedly arrogant as to actually tell someone old enough to have lived through WWII "how bad" an atomic bomb really was. Words failed him, and he just managed to make a couple of embarassed "gah!" noises.

The old man's expression softened and he gave Rodney a pat on the shoulder. "It is ok. I understand. I said many foolish things as a young man, especially after I found out exactly what I presume that you know already."

"What I know?" Rodney replied, at a loss for words for the first time in recent memory.

"Life is cruel. Men do cruelty to each other beyond reason or the capacity for good men to even survive, let alone fix. It pass." The man sighed sadly. "This will pass."

"I hope you're right." Rodney swallowed, looking back at CNN as text scrawled across the bottom of the screen. Apparently the NATO nations had issued a statement denying responsibility for the attack and decrying the unwarranted use of atomic weapons upon a populated part of the Russian Federation. "This feels like it could go up in flames at any second."

"I didn't say I would go well for us." The man let out a loud bark of laughter. "But even pain passes with time."

"The early estimates from the Russian Embassy stated that thousands of people died in the attack. Russian Soldiers mostly, but a couple of civilians too." Rodney snorted. "They're calling it "minimal" damage for an atomic bomb blast. They're right too. Thousands of people dead in an instant and it's "less damage" than could have happened."

"We can only pray for them." The man intoned soberly, putting his hand over his heart. "Move on. Dead are dead. We are living, no point if you're going to spend that time living scared."

"You - you are an infuriatingly persistent old man." Rodney griped, deflating under the man's pleasantly insistent smile. "Why are you so determined to talk to me?"

"Got the sense that you needed the pep-talk." The man spun his cane with a flourish that seemed entirely incongruous with the seemingly timeless quality to him. "Now - are we going to get that coffee, or are you going to force an old man to keep standing up while he waits for his junior to come along with him."

"I'm not getting out of this Airport without us drinking coffee, am I?" Rodney actually laughed in spite of himself.

"Perhaps tea, that seems to be the local custom." The man pointed his cane to the TV. "And discussing the small mercies of life."

Rodney felt tears of joy rolling down his face as he read the new text bar, reading it out loud. "Russia confirms domestic terrorist attack - calls for greater international action as part of their war on the Chechen Separatists."

"I'm feeling like scones as well. I saw a shop that seems like they do scones well." The man lead Rodney by the arm, frog-marching him away from the Newsagent's store. "Come on, we'll celebrate world not ending."

"You're going to celebrate narrowly avoiding the apocalypse with a scone?" Rodney snorted. "Seems a bit mundane."

"Apocalypse is an overrated threat." The man waved off Rodney's concern. "We are very small and last only briefly. The world is very large and infinite. We all survive so many disasters before we pass without even knowing it. Asteroids, earthquakes, lightning, fire - few things are in our control. Better to find what joy there is in the little things."

"I - yeah, you're right." Rodney laughed. "It occurs to me that I don't even know who you are. Do you have a name to go with all this fortune cookie wisdom?"

"Shiro. I am Shiro Yoshimo." He replied.

"I'm Rodney." McKay laughed."What brings you to England Shiro?"

"Elton John." The man replied proudly.

Rodney snorted. "You're here for an Elton John concert?"

"And to take photographs of old Castles." The man affirmed. "I like old Castles. New ones too. Eurodisney was fun."

Rodney couldn't help himself, he burst into laughter at the idea of the tiny old man on a roller coaster.

"Oh - I see, laugh at the old man." Shiro replied idly. "Think you're clever do you?"

"I am an Astrophysicist." Rodney shrugged.

"Observational or Theoretical?" The man asked, sounding oddly comfortable with the subject matter.

"Both… are, are you a scientist?" Rodney inquired.

"I'm a very confident subscriber to Popular Science magazine." Joked the old man.

Rodney laughed, "Tea. Tea and a scone."

"Good, I would very much like for you to tell me about stars. An acquaintance of mine has recently renewed my interest in space." Shiro grinned. "Tell me, Rodney. Do you believe in Aliens?"


	7. Chapter 7

The scrublands were oppressively hot, even for the sturdy constitution of a Jaffa. Bra'tac would very much have liked to move back into the shade of the cave, but that would have robbed him of the ability to observe the path leading to the appointed meeting place. As the oldest of the Jaffa rebels, he felt a near-pathological obligation to protect his students.

What they were doing was beyond dangerous. Generally, contact was made with new recruits only after months, if not years, of exhaustive vetting to ensure that the Jaffa's heart was truly seeking freedom. Jaffa who paid easy lip service to the premise of freedom would often reveal their cowardice when the cause called for sacrifice in the name of liberty. Any group meeting between Jaffa rebels and potential allies risked the loss of years, if not centuries, of collected experience.

He had agreed to meetings like this one only twice before, one had nearly ended in catastrophe when one of their number turned traitor. They'd caught the would-be spy in the act when his communicator failed, pure chance saving the Jaffa rebellion from extinction.

This meeting was smaller than that one had been, and only Bra'tac was present from the loose collection of aging Jaffa warriors who might be considered its "leadership." If this failed, it would end the lives of a few dreamers but the dream itself would live on. Bra'tac was under no illusion that the Lord Warden was actually better than his Goa'uld peers, but his political actions with respect to Jaffa autonomy were sufficient to give him cause to arrange a meeting with emissaries from Nekheb. The Nekhebite Jaffa had been prolific in seeding weapons and material support to Jaffa rebels across the galaxy since the Lord Warden's rule began.

At first he'd taken it for a trap, a way to find and kill Shol'va. Over time, it became apparent to him that the offer of material support was sincere. It was likely a ploy to weaken the Warden's enemies, but Bra'tac's cell of Jaffa rebels could ill afford to turn down significant war assets. So Bra'tac and the senior members of the rebellion had set a meeting on an abandoned world with one of the Lord Warden's facilitators.

Most of his fellow Jaffa were hidden, concealed in the distant foliage or deep within the cave. Only a single Jaffa was with him, a young boy chosen specifically to give the illusion that Bra'tac was virtually unguarded. If the Warden's forces were there to do Bra'tac harm, it would be better to spring a trap upon them while the Warden's assassins believed Bra'tac vulnerable.

They had given Bra'tac a guarantee of safe passage, but many of the old ways were becoming unreliable.

Many things were changing in the worlds as he knew them. False gods who'd been languishing in obscurity were rising up and forming alliances, the balances of power were moving faster than he'd anticipated as old hatreds and even older foolishness was rekindled in the furnace of warfare. The cynical part of Bra'tac's heart ached with the reality that the only thing currently standing between the monster Moloch and Chulak were the armies of Apophis. Apophis' cruelty was unforgivable, but preferred to the black pit of despair that pervaded any lands touched by the Golden Calf.

There was a pin-prick of blue light on the horizon, just barely visible against the blazing sunlight. Bra'tac smiled. "Prepare yourselves, they are here."

"Master Bra'tac, is it true what they say? Of the Wardens armies? Do they truly fight the creatures of legend?" Whispered the young Jaffa standing next to his teacher. To'kec was barely old enough to have been given a symbiote. He was trustworthy, but still a dreamer. Stories of monsters and heroes still stirred the boy's heart with the force of youth.

"Tales are always a mix of truth and entertaining lies, boy. You should know that by now." Bra'tac chided To'kec affectionately. "But it would seem that reasonable to assume that the armies of Nekheb have found allies in the enemies of the Goa'uld."

"Furlings and monsters?" To'kec practically vibrated with excitement.

"The Goa'uld crafted the tales of their enemies intentionally. I know not which are truths and which are falsehoods. The System Lords were emphatic in their warnings to never interact with the demons of Sun and Snow, but they were equally emphatic in their own divine right to rule. I would approach the heroic epics with caution - it is reasonable to assume that our enslavers were not entirely truthful in those accounts they shared with their chattel." Bra'tac mused. "But I believe that they were at least somewhat sincere in their fear of the Furlings. Apophis more than most."

"Apophis was afraid?" The boy intoned eagerly, his whispered hiss of joy thunderous in the echoing cave mouth.

"Silence." Bra'tac hissed, glaring at the boy for his incautiousness. The younger Jaffa wilted under his gaze, earning a snort of amusement from Bra'tac. "Child, do not let your eagerness overpower your sense."

"Sorry master." To'kec apologized, shuffling his feet.

"It is well, boy." Bra'tac smiled at his student. "And yes. When Apophis spoke of the Furlings, he did so in a voice of reverence and fear. They frightened him as few things did."

"Are we going to ally with the Furlings?" The boy asked eagerly. "March with ogres and demons of Winter?"

"I think we have enough danger in our lives without summoning demons," Bra'tac shook his head, pointing to a small group of people walking across the scrublands. Three of them, two red armored Jaffa and what appeared to be a human female. "No - one set of monsters at a time is enough for me."

"Are we not here to ally with the warriors of the Warden?" To'kec queried.

"We are here to listen. Nothing more." Bra'tac replied firmly. "They have come with words. I will hear them. But we are not here to enslave ourselves to yet another false master. We will listen, then we will leave."

The boy nodded nervously. "And if they're not willing to accept that answer?"

"Then they will not leave."Bra'tac shrugged. "The warriors of the Lord Warden have won a great many victories in the past year, but they are still the soldiers of Heka. Fancy toys do not make a man a warrior."

"They are very, very nice toys though." To'kec lamented as the Jaffa grew closer and closer, allowing them to see the Jaffa of Nekheb.

Bra'tac was loath to admit it out loud, but one would be hard pressed to find fault in the artistry of Nekheb's warsmiths. Bound by neither the traditional orthodoxy of Goa'uld design or the strategic arms limitations treaties of the System Lords, the Jaffa of Nekheb had made drastic changes to the basic form and function of their armor. Their armor was sleeker, their materials made with composite material more similar to that of a starship's hull than the ferrous heavy materials favored by most Goa'uld armies. That more than any other single fact convinced Bra'tac that the rumors of Furling détente with Nekheb were founded in truth. The armies of Nekheb were arming themselves to fight Jaffa, not Furlings.

"Curious." Bra'tac mused. The staff weapons of the incoming Jaffa were not tipped with the heavy, flowering ball and wide cobra-like flared hit. No, these staff weapons ended with the serrated blade of a wickedly curved Khopesh one one end and a ceramic alloy spear that he was entirely certain opened to reveal a plasma-repeater on the other. "The Jaffa of Nekheb truly have abandoned all orthodoxy."

"Are they not formidable warriors, master Bra'tac?" Queried the young man.

"I do not question their capacity for bloodshed, only the degree to which their innovation has been tested in actual combat." Bra'tac replied, though his doubt was minimal. By all accounts the Jaffa of Nekheb had been adapting and evolving their methods of warfare with rapid enthusiasm if not total efficacy. It was probably a decent part of why they were losing more than they ought to have been losing, lack of experience in actually fighting a war. Heka's armies hadn't actually been in a real war since the fall of Earth. Commanders of the Lord Warden's armies were prone to making impulsive decisions that a more seasoned general wouldn't have made.

He wondered how many millions would have to die before Nekheb's military leadership was experienced enough not to make those mistakes. Not long under the current tempo of warfare, ten - perhaps twenty - years worth of continued experience was long enough for a commander to be relatively competent at waging warfare on a single world. Fleet admirals were rarely worth their salt before sixty. It seemed entirely plausible that the System Lords would band together and annihilate the Warden's armies long before that became an issue.

The Jaffa approaching him were confident in their stride - overconfident. They were being entirely too casual about walking into an unknown situation with potentially dangerous allies. Bra'tac rolled his eyes, heaven help him - his compatriots could easily overtake these fools. These men presumed to offer him help?

"Tak mal tiak." Greeted the the Jaffa of Nekheb as they reached the cave mouth. The older of the Jaffa, the apparent leader of their group reached out his hand to grasp Bra'tac firmly by the wrist. "Well met. What do I call you? Your organization was reluctant to share names."

"You may call me Sef." Bra'tac supplied the pseudonym, selecting a name at random. One never used one's real name for an initial meeting, not till one was sure of another free Jaffa's sincerity. "And you are?"

"You may call me Fin'ma. These are To'pan and Priestess Thema of the Skywalker Sisters." He gestured to his companions. Bra'tac arched his brow in curiosity at the woman's appearance.

Priestess Thema was oddly garbed for one of the Nekhebite clergy. Through in fairness, any garb at all was somewhat irregular for their order. Bra'tac had never seen someone dressed precisely in the manner Thema had elected to dress herself. It was a tightly fitted silk garment that might as well have been painted against her tattooed and pierced skin, slitted in a way that showed a generous helping of hip and thigh leading down to knee high white leather boots with a tall heel. The gossamer fabric dangled down from her sleeves, hanging nearly a foot from her wrists, low enough that even with her arms raised they were never higher than the tight silver belt ending in a sharp-V shaped icon engraved with complex hieroglyphs. She had allowed her hair to grow near comically long before tying it up into a pair of tight braids that wrapped up and around her ears. He wasn't sure precisely how she'd managed it, but he was quite certain that it would have seemed less immodest were she to have shown up entirely naked.

Fin'ma chuckled at Bra'tac's unspoken question. "It is one of the garments worn by Priestesses of the Order Skywalker. One of the less distracting ones, I assure you."

"Indeed." Bra'tac replied. "Dare I ask the origin of this… tradition?"

"The Order Skywalker seeks to find meaning in the parables of Lucas, as told by the Lord Warden. We support all those who seek to protect the downtrodden and fight their oppressor." Thema replied. "Our sisters follow the example of the Princess Organa, secret sister of the Wizard Prince. Our vestments are in imitation of those worn by the blessed Saint, as proscribed by the Bob."

"I am unfamiliar with the Bob." Bra'tac replied politely.

"The Bob is the Lord Warden's most trusted advisor. An undead Furling bound to serve him for eternity," She chuckled. "A spirit of Lust and Knowledge to follow a god of Chastity and Action."

"Realize that we do not intend to serve him similarly." Bra'tac replied politely. "I am here to listen to your proposal, but know this - we are free Jaffa. We do not worship false gods."

"All Jaffa are free." Replied the priestess eagerly. "Freed through the covenant of the warden."

"I need no blessing for freedom." Bra'tac scoffed.

"And yet you have it all the same." Fin'ma chuckled. "You need not believe in the Lord Warden's divinity to understand his sincerity. Jaffa, Tau'ri, Furlings, Goa'uld, Tok'ra, Vampire - the origins and nature of one matters little to the Warden. One is defined through one's choices, not one's birth. The Warden is the first among us to dismiss the relevance or reality of his divinity. "

"I have told you a thousand times, Fin'ma - it is a test. When he denies his own divinity it is a test to weed out the faithless." Insisted the priestess.

"Then it's an awful test, given how he rewards the faithless and insists that he cannot promise rewards in the next life." The Nekhebite Jaffa guffawed, amused in the way that could only be managed by old friends in a seasoned debate. This was obviously not the first time they'd disagreed over this matter.

The priestess shook a finger, clicking her tongue disapprovingly at the Jaffas lack of faith. "You doubt the divinity of the most powerful Gou'uld Lord in history? His magic is without peer."

"I doubt neither his power or his honestly. When he tells us that he is just a man of greater learning and opportunity, I believe him. When he tells me that we can learn the skills he knows, I believe him. Actions speak louder than words and his generosity is near limitless." Fin'ma brushed off the Priestess' dogmatic insistence on the Lord Warden's divinity, but not unkindly so.

"And what is the price of your patron's munificence?" Bra'tac inquired. "What does he demand of us?"

"I feel you misunderstand the purpose of the Order Skywalker." Replied the priestess. "Our order is not directly sanctioned by the Lord Warden. We follow his teachings but our actions are our own."

Bra'tac snorted derisively. "Of course they are."

"You doubt my integrity?" Fin'ma growled.

"I find that few Jaffa in the service of their Goa'uld would be so brash as to divert war materials away from their Lord amidst a bloody war." Bra'tac rejoined. "Certainly not for a purpose so vague as freedom."

Fin'ma threw back his head in mirth. "Do we not face one man who spends his energy accomplishing precisely that?"

Bra'tac nodded, taking in Fin'ma's words. "Assuming that I belive you, and assuming that you are sincere in your intention of providing material support to our rebellion - what support do you have to offer us? If you truly mean that you are not using the Lord Warden's resources, then what are you using?"

"I presume you are familiar with the Right of Conquest?" Fin'ma replied. "It is a practice from the time of Heka. Men and Jaffa could keep the spoils they won from a conquered foe, but all weapons, ships, chattel, and Naquadah were the property of Heka."

"I have heard of such a practice." Bra'tac replies disapprovingly. "It was one of the more loathsome traditions he adopted from his alliances with Moloch. Though by all accounts, the chattel were better treated by Heka."

"Worry not for the chattel. There are no slaves in the dominion of Nekheb. All are free." The priestess spread her arms in praise, splaying her fingers skyward. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is the Warden's way. We are given rights that may be taken by no man or god, lest we chose to give them ourselves."

"The right to self-defense second among them only to the right to speak one's mind freely." Agreed Fin'ma. "Our spoils are tithed by the needs of the war effort, but we each share in the plunder taken from Chronos and Moloch. We have come into a preponderance of weapons that far exceeds our current manpower. I alone have earned fifteen staff weapons and seven Zat'nik'tel. Given that I was only blessed with two hands to use them, I do not feel the need to trouble myself with an armory that I will never use. There are thousands of like minded Jaffa, humans, and Unas who formed our order, so that we might pass them to those who would find a better use for them."

"And you offer these to us freely, without asking payment in return?" Bra'tac's doubt hung from his every syllable.

"We do not offer these weapons unconditionally." Fin'ma held up his hand placatingly as Bra'tac inhaled sharply. "Worry not, friend. Our conditions are not so heinous as to offend your sense of honor."

"We require that you pledge to obey our code of conduct." The priestess smiled warmly. "Do what you can to guard peace in the Galaxy. Use these weapons to defend and protect, never to attack without cause. Respect all life, in any form. Serve others, rather than rule over them. Seek to improve yourself through knowledge and training. And slay anyone who would worship, do commerce with, or tolerate those who would worship or do commerce with the dominion of Moloch."

"Is that it?" Bra'tac inquired eagerly - he could agree to terms that laughably reasonable without even needing to consult the other senior members of the Jaffa rebellion.

"We do have one more request, but understand that it is a request - our material support of your rebellion is not contingent upon it." Fin'ma waved his hand in small circles as though pulling the words from his own mouth. "We would request that you provide succor to any Tok'ra who you might encounter. They have not found the Warden's Word yet, but we believe that their missions are agreeable to the Warden."

Bra'tac arched his brow. If he hadn't already been planning on passing word of this meeting to the Tau'ri - that alone would have merited visiting his old pupil, Teal'c. "Indeed - I will have to consult the leadership of my movement about your request but I can certainly guarantee the terms will be met for the first condition you requested."

"Perfect." Fin'ma clapped his hands eagerly. "Then we shall pass along the first shipment."

"I presume you have hidden it somewhere on the planet?" Bra'tac inquired. He had not seen them ditch any crates or bags, so it seemed likely that they'd left the weaponry near the gate.

"In a manner of speaking." Replied the priestess as she tapped her belt, pressing upon one of the hieroglyphs with a long fingernail. As the symbol lit up, the sky grew immeasurably darker. Three angular shapes blotted out the sky, Al'kesh bombers.

"I told you not to bring your ships!" Bra'tac hissed. "Only those weapons you were offering. We cannot carry a ship's cargo hold worth of weapons even if we wanted to."

"Obviously not." Agreed the priestess. "Which is why we're giving you the ships."

Bra'tac was briefly speechless. "You're giving us three Al'kesh?"

"We're actually giving you three Al'kesh, quite a few gliders, three cargo-holds worth of weapons, and two hundred bars of weapons grade naquadah." Fin'ma shrugged. "There are more spoils than usual after we've taken one of Moloch's fortresses. It's not like we're not trying to capture or ransom his Jaffa. Once they're all dead, we take anything that isn't bolted down then cut the bolts and take the rest."

"How regularly can we expect shipments?" Bra'tac asked, sincerely amazed by the arsenal he was being handed.

"Not often - perhaps never again." The Priestess shrugged. "It is only when our order has the plunder and ability to divert that plunder from heading back to Nekheb without it being noticed that we can do something like this for your group or one of rebel groups from the other Pantheons. Yu's armies destroyed one of our last convoys to the group in his territory, though we reasonably suspect that he blamed Lucien pirates rather than our order."

"We will almost certainly never meet again." Fin'ma shrugged. "But your cause is just, and men are defined by taking action to protect that which is right."

"Thank you friend." Bra'tac grasped the Jaffa's arm. "I will not forget you."

"Nor I you." Agreed Fin'ma. "Good luck, Jaffa, and may the Force be with you."


	8. Chapter 8

Grayson kicked his feet back and forth, dangling them over the wall as he drank from the waterskin. He wiped the back of his hand across his lip, exhaling hard as he caught his breath.

He still had a couple hours of daylight before supper would be served in his father's palace, but he was going to have to be quick if he wanted to make it home in time to ask some more questions to the Skull before dinner. The skull was the only one who seemed to know as much as his father about the things that mattered.

He desperately wanted to learn those things so that his father would one day call him son. He wanted to be able to tell his father that he loved him. But how do you earn the love of a god?

The Lord Warden Dre'su'den the Ha'ri had plucked him from the streets of Delmak and brought him out of starvation and into a life of privilege that he'd never realized was even an option. Grayson had a bed, a room, new clothes, spending money and even writing lessons. He would one day become a scribe in the grandest Library in all the galaxy. He was going to immortalize the words of the Gods themselves.

He was one of many children the Warden had seen something special in. Not the oldest, but the first. He was the first human child of the Lord Warden.

That mattered.

It had to matter.

His mother's doted on them. Children were blessed in the Lord Warden's realm. His father passed wisdom to his people circumspectly, teaching his own children lessons that were then passed along to the rest of the world through the writings of the scribes.

Grayson almost dreaded the responsibility of being the first person to learn a story from his father. His mothers would interrogate him afterwards to dissect the tale, asking Grayson and his siblings to repeat the story verbatim - generally asking intense questions about what prompted the story to be told.

Grayson's accounts often had holes in them. He didn't like admitting that he often asked for specific stories or more tales about his favorites. His father favored the Spiderman when able, but Grayson always wanted to hear stories about Batman and his wards.

They gave him hope.

The Lord Warden was an all powerful and all knowing God King, but when Grayson closed his eyes he could almost imagine that the Lord Warden really was the human father he had never met. He just seemed so normal. The man carried eternity in his eyes but he played games of chase and sport with human children often - teaching them new ways of having fun.

He taught Grayson Baseball, and had even given him a mitt and bat so that he could practice. It had been a special occasion for Grayson, but he was sad that it hadn't been a uniquely special moment. He had to share his father with the rest of his adoptive siblings whenever they met.

It was why Grayson was out in the blistering heat, hours after the rest of his siblings had given up and headed home. He knew that if he worked harder his father would finally notice him and give him what he wanted most in the world - another round of catch.

His father had used Grayson to demonstrate how to throw and catch the ball with the Mitt, starting show and speeding up as Grayson got the hang of it. His heart swelled in memory of the envy in his siblings eyes as his father praised him for catching a fast throw

He wanted that again. He wanted it do much that it hurt sometimes.

He didn't talk about it with his siblings much. It felt petty given what they'd seen and lived through. Grayson remembered the Dragons and the Grey Man - they'd been terrifying. But the worst of what he saw was nothing compared to those who survived Chronos' men.

His hurt was no less real, but he could sleep without screaming. He'd been too young to remember his parents deaths - let alone climb over their glory bodies.

He told himself that his father would not approve of his selfish desire to swap places with his youngest sister when she woke from her night terrors and was whisked away by his mothers to sleep in their father's quarters. He cringed at envy of his brother Abda, the cripple, who his father occasionally carried on his shoulders so that they could round the bases together.

But the truth was that Grayson wasn't broken, so Grayson had to stay strong for his siblings. Family was there for each other. He just sometimes wished that the give and take of family would sometimes give him more.

He was lonely if he was being honest.

Grayson didn't even really understand the language of his siblings that well. It was similar enough to Delmak's common tongue to understand, but he missed talking in his native language.

Baseball didn't care that he had a funny accent or tease him for not liking spicy food. It was just him and the game.

He drank another drag from the waterskin and willed his body to not be bothered by the sun. His skin, long accustomed to the subterranean tunnels of Delmak's metropolis, was ill equipped for the desert. The linen shirt and wide-brimmed cap he favored looked ridiculous, but they were the only thing protecting him from the painful red burns he got if he tried to wear the local fashion. He would perhaps have been self conscious about his pallor by comparison with the mahogany and ebony shades of his siblings if his father hadn't been a virtual specter of a man.

He twitched in shock as he felt something moving under his legs before remembering that he'd brought Artoo with him. Artoo was a squat six legged lizard that was favored by the residents of Nekheb as a pet. It would one day grow large enough for him to ride but it was barely larger than his foot at the moment. Supposedly the wild ones grew larger than a house. It looked up at him with yellow green eyes, flicking its tongue out contentedly in the warm sun.

Artoo was better suited for the heat than Grayson. The creature puffed out it's fat cheeks, making a warbling "grawrp" of pleasure as Grayson reached down to scratch beneath the creature's face. He would rather have had a cat, but cats weren't "pets" on Nekeb. They were just sort of free roaming - and woe betide anyone that his mothers caught preventing a cat from doing as it wished.

There was a fluttering noise to Grayson's right and he flinched as something landed on the bench next to him. Grayson had to resist the urge to cry out as a Furling stat down on the bench - reminding himself that the Furlings while dangerous, were invited guests of his father. He still clutched the bat tighter protectively nudging his pet away from the creature with his foot.

The small fair skinned little man was a handsome, if scaled down, older man. His hair was exceptionally long and streaked with fine, symmetrical lines of glowing silver. The jewels along his fingers and brow complimented the fine, midnight blue of his flowing gown. He looked at the baseball diamond approvingly, clicking his little tongue before facing Grayson. The handsome little man's eyes flashed with literal sparking motes of silver as he saw the bat and asked. "Ye be a fan of the sport, do ye lad?"

Grayson sat still, not quite sure what to do. Father had forbidden his children from seeking out interactions with the Furlings. He'd told them "Fairy Tales" that always seemed to end gruesomely for mortals who chose to deal with the Furlings incautiously. That being said, rudeness seemed equally likely to end poorly.

"Yes sir. I like Baseball very much." Grayson replied nervously.

"Ah - Forgive me lad, I forget that it can be overwhelming to meet such a august person as a King of the Tylwth Teg." The little man rested his palm against his forehead. "I am Gwyn ap Nudd. But since ye like baseball and since we be alone, ye may call me Gwyn instead of 'Yer Majesty.' I scarcely expected one of the Wyrm's worlds to have the Great Game upon it."

"They play baseball elsewhere?" Grayson asked eagerly. He'd actually believed it an invention of his father.

"Aye lad - there be an entire planet… well two nations worth speaking of, with entire leagues to the great sport. But other than the occasional Softbank Hawks game the second isn't much to speak of." The man tutted his tongue. "How long have ye been playing the sport?"

"Father taught it to us a couple months ago. We've got three teams, and we're pretty good." Grayson replied, relaxing his hands on the bat but not letting go of it. The man didn't appear to wish him harm, but one could not trust in the good will of demons.

"Would ye like to see a real game of the sport?" The man waggled his brows exaggeratedly. "I could show you one, American League - Yankees versus Red Sox. I was going to watch by myself but you seem like a decent companion."

"What do you want for that?" Grayson's mouth went dry at the idea of seeing actual teams play. Father had mentioned "Yankees" once, in a tone he normally reserved for Vampires.

"I do not want anything. Just promise that you will keep loving the game." The little man beamed. "Not many have the spirit for it. You do. Mayhaps you'll share the love with others and I'll have two planets worth of games to watch."

"You really like Baseball that much?" Grayson queried.

"I like the Great Game, but it's more than that lad." Gwyn smiled. "I invest - ye see. In playing cards, in memorabilia for the Great Game, but that's just a side business. What interests me most is people. Give interesting people a chance ta' shine and they tend to bring you dividends for doing so. I get the sense that yer going to be very interesting."

Grayson kept his lips shut, avoiding eye contact with the man out of embarrassment. "I'm not special."

"Really? For someone who doesn't aspire to be intersting, yer spending a whole lot of time by yourself trying to become great." The man chortled. "So - who are ye trying to impress? Yer father or yer girl?"

"Girl?" Grayson blushed. "I haven't got a girl?"

"Aye?" The man looked past grayson, his eyes focusing on something closer to the city walls. "Well, yer popular for someone without a girl then."

"Child!" Barked the harsh noise of furiously angry woman's voice. "Cease speaking with that creature at once!"

Grayson winced, he'd been hoping that Novice Khadija wouldn't be able to figure out where he was till long after he'd been able to get home and wash up for supper. He wasn't entirely comfortable interacting with her under the best of circumstances. She treated him like an infant - an incompetent one at that - in spite of only being a couple years older than he.

Some of the uncomfortable nature of their relationship stemmed from a couple embarrassing attempts to flirt with her before he realized that she was planning to marry his Father. It was… awkward to say the least. Girls were confusing, and Khadija seemed to be the most confusing one of them he'd met so far. Hopefully when she spiritually married his Father he'd be able to stop himself from having embarrassing thoughts about her.

It hadn't worked for the rest of his mothers yet, but he could hope that she'd be the exception.

She wasn't yet initiated fully into the clergy yet, so she wasn't one of his mothers, but she brow beat him more than the rest of his mother's combined. He didn't know why she was so focused on him but he could scarcely turn around without her being in at his heels, chastising him for not obeying some arbitrary rule of conduct on Nekheb.

He hoped she wouldn't actually pass the rites of devotion. He didn't think he'd be able to survive having that woman as a mother. It came as some comfort that none of the novices had been fully initiated since his father took over. The clergy was still struggling to understand his father well enough to understand what he was babbling about, let alone to decide that other were qualified to do so.

"Novice Khadija," Grayson gritted his teeth into a forced smile. "Have you come to play?"

"Get away from that creature." The novice wasn't able to hide her open contempt for the magical creature as she crossed her arms. "It can't be trusted."

"He is beginning to tire of being called an it." The small man's eyes narrowed. "I'm in a good mood so I'm going to give ye a chance to apologize fer that slip of the tongue, lass. Yer a child and it's generally wise to exercise caution with beings of power."

"Get away from it." The Novice held up a iron pentagram within a circle, a necklace made in imitation of his father's only piece of jewelry. "Before it hurts you."

"She's not a very good listener, is she?" The man looked at Grayson, seemingly baffled that she would escalate the situation. "Ye need to apologize, lass - this won't end well for ye unless ye do."

"She doesn't mean it." Grayson gulped, realizing that the iron symbol wasn't even registering to the little man as a threat. Lea, the scary woman who father sometimes met with, was the only one he'd seen not flinch when someone held up iron. Father seemed to regard her as a peer. "She's only trying to help."

"She can speak for herself, lad." Gwyn sighed. "Thrice I ask and done - do ye apologize."

"Go away demon." The novice hissed.

"Ye brought this on yerself lass." The man said, a wicked glint in his eyes as he snapped his fingers and there was a sound like ringing bells that came from his fingers. Khadija blinked in confusion as she tried to walk forwards, and was unable to move. Her eyes bugged in horror as vines sprouted out from the ground, piercing her skin and wrapping up her, moving through her bare flesh like wriggling worms. She screamed as thorns burst out of her skin, bright red punctures coming out from the wriggling shapes under her flesh.

"Oh no - oh gods no." Grayson tripped over Artoo as he tried to stand up and help her, falling on his bottom and earning a bite from the frightened reptile. "Khadija!"

His heart hammered in his chest as he watched her writhe in pain as wooden bark wrapped around her body, trapping her in a human shaped trunk of white wood. She was an annoying know-it-all of a girl, but she wasn't that bad - just a little bit opinionated. She certainly didn't deserve to die.

"Your Majesty!" Grayson called out, using the creature's proper title in an effort to appease its ego. "Please don't kill her! Let her go!"

"Kill her - lad - I'm not going to kill her." The man shook his head. "She'll be fine, whole and healthy." He waved his hand as the bark almost closed over the girl's face. There were tears in her eyes as she struggled and failed to move her head. "But I'm nay gonna leave without teaching her a lesson in manners."

He grinned, his little teeth glimmering with sharkish amusement. "In fact I think I can teach two lessons with his one."

Grayson flinched as Gwyn reached down to help him up, but didn't dare strike at the man. He was capable of things he'd only seen his father do. The man's hand touched Grayson's skin and the horrific vision he'd seen disappeared in an instant to be replaced by a young woman standing in place, eyes wide and flinching.

"But - but she was - I saw you… She's ok?" Grayson swallowed nervously.

"Well…. Not ok." The man pursed his lips. "The illusion is supposed to just irritate her - she is mentally inflicting upon herself the crime she feels is commensurate with the insult she's just given. It's always the religious loonies lad - no sense of proportion."

"She's doing this to herself?" Grayson touched her shoulder nervously. Her skin was clammy even in the blazing heat.

"Not really - I am the one who cursed her. But the particulars of the illusion are created by the mind of the cursed. They young lass needs to seriously consider therapy." The man tutted.

"What is therapy?" Grayson inquired. Father had referenced the term at times but never clarified it.

"About three thousand years of collective social sciences and the humanities trying to replace the preceding fifteen thousand years of collective family grudges," The King tutted his tongue. "She's got issues that she's not dealing with."

"She's a priestess. She's due to spend her life in service of a divine being with a divine purpose? What issues could she have?" Grayson scoffed.

"Lad, ye be the ward of that same god. Feel ye like there are no problems in your heart?" Gwyn snorted.

"Ah." It wasn't much of a response, but Grayson didn't feel up to the task of matching wits with the fairy King. "So… can you let her go?"

"No, but you can." The man grinned.

"How?"

"She's doing this to herself lad. Ye need to bring her out." He grabbed Grayson by the shirt and pulled him down to eye level, staring at him intently. "Hold her head. Get real close - face to face, and look into her eyes."

Grayson blushed deep enough to be seen under the pink of his sunburn at the idea of being that close to her. "How close?"

"Lad, don't get all twisted up trying not to go Oedipal on her. Yer looking at her, nay marrying her." The man laughed. "Ye will know when ye be close enough."

Grayson looked into her eyes, and felt a powerful tug in the back of his mind as he was sucked into the now seemingly endless pools of dark green. As he felt his mind leave his body entirely, he heard the voice of the Fairy King in the distance.

"Well, father or woman - I think ye'll be very interesting to them indeed."


	9. Chapter 9

Set after Shattering Occam's Razor

Colonel O'Neill's head felt like it was going to split in half as he looked at the massive stack of paperwork on his desk. He had been filling out forms for ten hours a day, every day for the preceding two weeks. He had delegated as much of the administrative burdens placed upon him as he was legally, ethically, and morally allowed to do, finding every Junior Officer and NCO with a pulse that even vaguely fit into his administrative control, and he was still conservatively five weeks behind on the paperwork he was obligated to file.

In any major command incident there was a litany of reporting obligations to parent commands and oversight agencies in the event of any safety and security incident. Even for minor injuries on the job there were reports to be filed and message traffic to be sent. It could be administratively burdensome at the best of times and that was when aliens hadn't taken the Admin Officer's brain away in a jar.

Most of the people who were supposed to be handling this sort of thing were either dead, in the hospital, or being reviewed to make sure they were mentally and physically fit for duty. Senior leadership had no choice but to step in and handle the gaps in coverage or they would fall even farther out of scope than they'd already fallen.

It could be worse, he supposed. He didn't envy the people given the unenviable duty of filing the paperwork for the litany of security incidents and information spillages that had resulted from the attack on the SGC. It seemed like every service member still drawing breath had entered spaces that they'd not been authorized to be inside out of pure necessity. It would ultimately result in virtually no consequences for the affected servicemembers, but the paperwork still needed to happen.

He was going cross eyed trying to comprehend the log book for purchasing orders in an effort to figure out the arcane system for record keeping that the civilian previously running procurement had used when, blessedly, there was a knock on his office door.

"Enter!" O'Neill said in what he very much hoped wasn't utter desperation, and was glad to see Daniel Jackson's head pop in the door. At least he was for ten seconds until he realized why the good doctor was there. "No - hell no Daniel! I'm already looking at a sixteen hour day tomorrow."

"Jack, I'm sorry. I would love to get you out of this. Heck, I'd love to get me out of this, but the Secretary of the Air Force is adamant that all civilians and servicemembers attend the whole Safety Stand Down." Daniel shrugged. "Hammond tried to convince him that it was going to complicate things more than solve them, but he's getting this from the SECDEF. I get the sense that they're not willing to deviate from the written instructions at all for when this eventually gets disclosed."

"Who could they possibly be bringing in who is qualified to speak about an invasion of murderous crustaceans?" Jack's blood thundered in his ears.

"They're mostly bringing in people from the CDC, some from NASA, and a couple of xenobiologists from the NID." Daniel pulled a notebook out of his pocket running his finger down his hasty scribbles. "And a science fiction writer who retired from the Army Rangers. Apparently he was on the staff of a couple episodes of Deep Space Nine."

"We had men die and they're sending us a freaking author?" Jack swore profusely. "And what is a xenobiologist? Did they just grab a cryptozoologist and hope for the best?"

"I'm pretty sure he's just a PHD with a focus on biology and paleontology." Daniel chewed his lip speculatively. "His published work seems pretty interesting and he's been attending the TED conference in Monterey to give lectures."

"The what?" Jack blinked.

"It's an academic conference in California, they try to grab a whole bunch of interesting thinkers to give speeches. They're generally good - or at least I hear they are, I've never had the chance to attend." Daniel shrugged. "It's the sort of place that would never have been willing to hear my theories in a million years. You know, respectable."

"So how long are we going to listed to Mr Respectable Dinosaurs and Cells?" Jack sighed.

"He's blocked out for two hours." Daniel replied. "He's talking about the dangers of alien bacteria and basic quarantine procedures."

"Two hours? We have to sit through a two-hour lecture on quarantine? Unbelievable - how many two-hour briefs are they forcing us to sit through?" He waited expectantly as the doctor bashfully said nothing. "Oh dear god no. Daniel, how many?"

"They're just what we're legally obligated to show." Daniel replied nervously.

Jack knew in his rational brain that the doctor hadn't wanted to be put in charge of arranging the Safety Stand Down any more than he'd wanted to be fixing the supply chain, but he wasn't feeling overly rational at the moment. "How many, damn it?"

"Five days worth." Daniel replied. "They're flying us out the representatives with the requisite clearances who have the certifications to give us the safety briefs… and … well…"

"Well what Daniel? What else?" Jack snarled, accidentally knocking down a stack of papers that he knew weren't numbered. His eye twitched in agony as he realized that it would be at least another hour to fix that. "You have got to be…"

"I've got it!" Daniel knelt down and started putting the paperwork in order only for Jack to kneel in the middle of the pile.

"Uh-huh, nope - you're not avoiding this. What else?" Jack glared murder at the archeologist.

Daniel let out a frenzied mess of sounds that didn't sound like English. Jack exhaled abruptly, counting down from ten. "Space Monkey, so help me, if you don't say that with actual words…"

"Hammond decided that since we're already doing it, we might as well do all the yearly training briefs." Daniel winced as Jack let out a vile oat.

"Are you telling me that between every damn program level brief we're going to be getting I'm going to have to sit through some schmuck rambling about motorcycle safety, the proper operation of a barbeque, and not getting a DUI?" Jack asked in a voice of deadly calm.

"And sexual assault prevention, digital security, equal opportunity enforcement - " Daniel flinched as Jack went into another loud tirade.

"Equal Opportunity? We're the only employer of Extraterrestrials and Dragons on Earth! How much more diversity could they possibly be looking for?" Jack flung the pile of papers into the air, kicking a couple of them as they fell.

"Jack, you know this stuff is important." Daniel chided him. "The SGC isn't all of the military and I've heard how some of the Enlisted talk. There are a lot of words they use that are not ok when they don't think anyone is listening."

"Daniel, crab people literally invaded Earth. I'm not overly worried about the racial divide between people who just killed enemies with an exoskeleton." Jack replied in frustration, though in truth he knew the doctor was right. Every time he was entirely certain the safety and conduct briefings were too dumb there would inevitably be some serviceman or servicewoman who proved him wrong after they got drunk and tried to play a winning game of NJP bingo.

"Jack." Daniel said with an upward lilt to it, using the Colonel's own name to convey disappointment, annoyance, and amusement simultaneously.

"Just - just let me be mad for a little while Daniel." Jack sighed in defeat. "I get that its necessary, I get that we need to do it. I just - If I have to watch that freaking safe driving video one more time I'm going to file a complaint with the IG for inhuman treatment."

"I'm getting Siler to give that brief. He's going to just have it be a couple minutes of motorcycle safety. It won't be that bad." Daniel offered comfortingly, picking up the pages for the second time and putting them on Jack's desk.

"I guess that's something." Jack sighed. "We should get the admin orders hot filled - it should be easier not that this has been classified as a hardship duty billet with hazard pay."

"It wasn't already?" Daniel blinked

"How could it be? It's in Colorado. We can billet code combat pay easily, plenty of commands do that, but if we started alleging that working in NORAD was dangerous someone would start investigating what we do here." Jack shrugged. "Someone is going to get greedy and take a set of "non-deployable" orders with combat pay just so they can live in Colorado Springs, the poor bastards. No idea what they're getting into."

"I think I understood half those words." Daniel sighed. "I swear that the military speaks in it's own dialect. I'm just glad you had the courtesy not to use the litany of acronyms I know were on the tip of your tongue."

"Don't worry Danny Boy. We're 5 by 5." Jack grinned sarcastically. "I just need to grab my CAC before we head to the DFAC to avoid an OPSEC issues that might end in a PI or an NJP. Don't want to be the cause of an RTFM issue."

"F U." replied the doctor chuckling dryly. "Do you want to come and get Jello with me or not?"

"I never say no to Jello." Jack replied with gusto, before closing his eyes in exasperation as the phone rang. He kept them closed as it rang another six times.

"Uh, are you going to - " Daniel stopped as Jack held up his finger and counted another three rings, waiting for the answering machine to get it. It picked on the tenth ring.

"As I was - damn it!" Jack picked up the telephone in a furry. "Yes, what is it?"

"Uh… maybe I have the wrong number. My name is Harry Dresden." Replied a confused man's voice. "I got a call about a consultant job from a Jack O'Neill. Something about providing expertise."

Jack's headache tripled. The guy from Chicago, of course he called back. The SGC had been liaising with the NID to try and figure out how many alien predators were in Chicago. Early investigation suggested that the massive creature who'd attacked the Tok'ra had not been a unique occurence.

They had nothing concrete as of yet but Mayborne's people were trying to be discrete, slowing the process. Slow though it might have been, the NID agents were capable and competent. Jack didn't like to admit it, but their reports were comprehensive and useful. So when they mentioned the apparent resource for dealing with "unusual" problems was the P.I. Harry Dresden, he believed not only that it was true but also that it would only be a matter of time before Harry Maybourne realize that as well.

So, in an effort to waylay Mayborne potentially getting his claws in someone actually worth a damn, Jack had made the man an offer out of the new budget for contractors to replace the ones who'd died. Fortunately the SGC did need civilian investigators to run security assessments and check for foreign surveillance, so trying to hire a P.I. - especially an underpriced one - was an easy sell to Hammond.

"Hello?" Asked the voice.

"Sorry." Jack replied. "It's been a long day. Yes, we are potentially interested in screening you for some contract work on behalf of the USAF."

"I'm not actually Enlisting or anything if I do this, am I?" Asked the PI.

"No." Replied Jack. "You'd be consulting at the rates we quoted you."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but what's the catch. Your offer was a bit too good to be true. It's been my experience that when people offer you everything you want, you don't want what they're offering." Jack could hear the sounds of pages ruffling in the background.

"There actually aren't many people who are going to pass a high level background check or our additional screenings." Jack replied. "That offer depends upon you meeting those criteria and providing proof of your extraordinary claims."

There was a brief pause on the other side of the phone before the man broke into a fit of the goggles. "What, are you worried about me talking about the little green men?"

Grey actually, thought Jack. Though, he supposed, the Unas might count as green - certainly not little. "There are a number of advanced systems and classified items in NORAD. We require even criminal consultants to pass stringent standards."

"Yeah." The P.I. exhaled deeply. "I was worried about that."

"Mr. Dresden, I assure you that most potential issues on a background check can be resolved." Jack replied. "You'll never know till you try."

"Huh? Oh - no, no. I'm not worried about that." The man replied dismissively. "It's the computers I'm worried about. Wizards tend to make those go… bad. Me more than most. If I walk into NORAD I'm pretty sure your stuff will try to reenact the movie War Games."

Jack rolled his eyes. Of all the Mickey Mouse reasons for not taking a background check. "Mr. Dresden, this is a perfectly normal process. You don't need to worry."

"If I go near any of those computers we all need to worry." The man replied. "Look, I really need the money but I'm not willing to risk having hurricane Dresden around Nukes."

Jack closed his eyes and tried to remind himself that a literal Dragon was coming over to his backyard on Saturday to learn how to make Smores and tell scary stories. "You believe that just having you around NORAD is going to cause a nuclear war… because your magic powers will cause lasting damage to the computers?"

Daniel blinked, mouthing the words back to Jack in amusement. Jack shrugged, holding his hand over the receiver and whispered "Yes, seriously."

Dresden replied sheepishly. "Uh… yeah kinda."

Jack repeated the words "this is plausible" and "Hok'taur are a thing" in his head on a loop as he physically restrained himself from saying the sarcastic response that was just begging to be said. "We could meet you off site then. We really just need you to go through the credit and criminal history checks and it will be fine."

There was a long pause. "Credit?"

"Yes." Jack affirmed. "Credit is one of the major barriers to getting a clearance. If you've got issues with debt that is a red flag for people to exploit you for personal or political gain."

"I was kind of hoping that the US Air Force exploiting my debt was going to get me out of it." Replied the self-titled Wizard with a tone of defeat in his voice.

"Exactly how bad are we talking?" Jack groaned. Of course the cops were willing to work with someone desperate for cash - a man who listed his profession as "Wizard" wasn't likely to see any clients who weren't crazy or desparate. If the man actually had any magical powers, he'd have to be a complete moron not to list himself as a Private Investigator and just use his "magic" to just solve crimes effectively. It wasn't as though clients gave a rats ass how cases get solved, as long as they were.

"I - I'm probably not behind on any bills right now." Replied Dresden in a tone that sounded only partially confident in that statement.

"Look, we'll run you through a background check and if it comes up without issues we'll call you back. Just tell me your e-mail address and we'll send you the SF-86 paperwork." Jack pulled out a pen and a pad of paper.

"Is that a computer thing? Because I don't have a computer. I don't even have a mobile phone." Replied the P.I. nervously. "I don't even have a fax… they don't last for me."

"Do you possibly have a friend who lives in the year 2000 with a Delorean who'd be willing to visit you in the 1950s and pass along a print-out before the sock hop happens and your brother disappears from the polaroid?" The acerbic reply slipped out of Jack's lips before he could manage the brain to mouth filter that was necessary in interacting with civilian contractors. Fortunately Dresden seemed to have a decent sense of humor.

"Yeah, I've got a gal." Dresden chuckled. "Anything that I can start looking up in the interim?"

"You're going to need to get fingerprinted. You're a contractor with the Chicago PD so that shouldn't be an issue." Jack tried to remember what had been the biggest pain from his last background check. "Oh, and you're going to need to account for your whereabouts for the past ten years. Addresses, people who knew you, people who can verify that. Stuff like that."

There was another long pause. "Uh… I was living a little out of the way for a lot of my youth... "

"Just put an address for the investigator to go to." Jack replied.

"My… guardian was protective of his privacy." Dresden's willfully diplomatic tone worried Jack, his reply did nothing but reinforce that worry. "Kind of a recluse. Not a "let people on his property" sort of guy if you get my drift. I don't even think there was an address. We were just sort of out in the wilderness."

"Do you at least have a high school or college that we can use to verify your identity?" Somehow Jack knew that the answer was "no" before Dresden bothered to reply.

"GED, but I just went to the school to take it on the day of the test." The man sounded a little ashamed. Jack didn't press the issue, if he really had been raised in the abject destitution it sounded like he'd been raised in, it would be cruel to keep asking questions.

"Dresden, we can't hire you if we can't tell you why we're hiring you. And the only way you'll be able to be hired is by passing a background check." Jack replied calmly, trying to be honest but clear.

"I mean, if what you need is advice about magic I'm sure we could work something out." The man replied hopefully. The P.I. must have really needed the money.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Dresden. It doesn't work like that. You pass a check then we'll start vetting you to see if we want to hire you. You don't and we can't. Simple as that." He replied to the P.I. in a matter of fact staccato that was firm, but not unfriendly. "You have my telephone number. If you want to leave me a message with an e-mail address I can send you the forms, I'll send them to you. The choice is yours."

"I - I'll get back to you." The man spoke slowly, fumbling the words enough that Jack was quite certain he'd never hear the name "Harry Dresden" again.

"You do that. Have a nice day." Jack said his goodbye, hanging up the phone to look at Daniel Jackson. The doctor looked like he was about to explode from the effort of not asking questions about the frankly absurd conversation he'd just been privy to.

"Do you want to tell me something Jack?" The doctor was able to get the sentence out without devolving into giggles, but just barely.

"Jello first - stories about lunatics later." Jack replied. "But I promise you that was one hell of a conversation."

"Oh, I'm sure it was." Daniel joked. "But I promise that I've got one to match it."

"How could you possibly have a conversation to match a midwestern Wizard listing off all the reasons that he will never be able to step foot in this base?" Jack snorted.

"The Chaplain is planning to give a spoken word beatbox rap summarizing the contents of everything said at the Safety Stand Down. He has Siler doing the beatboxing while he raps with Teal'c." Daniel held up his hand, palm forward. "I swear to God. Teal'c."

"Ok, you win."


End file.
